Grace has a sharp mind and a powerful right hook and has never met an enemy she could not best...until the man she once loved returns. Single-minded and ruthless, Ewan, Duke of Marwick, has spent a decade searching for the woman he never stopped loving. A long-ago gamble may have lost her forever, but Ewan will go to any lengths to win Grace back...and make her his duchess. Reconciliation is the last thing Grace desires. Unable to forgive the past, she vows to take her revenge.
If you expect fireworks of antagonism, you may be disappointed; this is a tender second-chance romance between two people who have known a life full of pain and abandonment. It’s emotional and heart-wrenching, as both Grace and Ewan are characters who experience their emotions strongly and earnestly. Think of this as more of a slow simmer than a rolling boil. Daring and the Duke will crush your heart and then slowly and carefully piece it back together. It’s the epitome of catharsis.
Visceral, gritty, and full of passion and angst, this romance mixes moments of emotional introspection with grand scenes of balls, fights, and, of course, scorching intimacy. Grace and Ewan had traumatic pasts, and now they are both discovering who they are in the present and who they could be together. While this story excels as a second-chance, redemption love story, what really makes it stand out is the unabashedly feminist exploration of power and how it ties in with identity and desire. The cinematic finale draws the series to a wholly satisfying conclusion ... Dark, daring, delicious, and absolutely delightful.
MacLean concludes her Bareknuckle Bastards Regency series...not with a bang but a sensual whisper ... Grace is a fierce heroine and her role as the proprietress of a notorious ladies’ club adds dimension to an otherwise thin plot that feels more like an epilogue to the previous books than a self-contained outing. Series fans will be glad to see loose ends get tied up, but long for a meatier tale.
