Review: The Duke’s Unexpected Love (The Strongs of Shadowcrest #1) by Alexa Aston

                                                         

Print Length: 262 pages

Publisher: Dragonblade Publishing (February 2, 2024)

From Goodreads.com: A virgin widow running her own company. A man who returns home after years at sea. An oddly-matched couple—who may not be so incompatible after all . . .

James Jones recalls little of his past, only remembering being taken as a young boy and growing up on the Seven Seas. Rising from cabin boy to captain of a ship, a chance encounter with a drunken stranger leads James back to his family, where he discovers he is the heir to the dying Duke of Seaton.

Sophie Grant, daughter of a viscount, never made her come-out, thanks to her father’s bad investments, which were paid off by Josiah Grant, owner of one of the leading shipping lines in Great Britain. As part of the arrangement, the shy Sophie is given to Josiah in marriage. Her new, much older husband helps Sophie to gain confidence in herself by teaching her all about how to run his shipping empire.

James, a former captain for one of Grant’s vessels, encounters the now-widowed Sophie and feels a connection with the efficient, intelligent woman. Rebelling against his new role as a leading member of the ton, he despises Polite Society and its expectation that he wed some titled gentleman’s bird-witted daughter—because James is increasingly drawn to the gossiped-about, independent Sophie Grant.

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My Rating: 1 star out of 5

I'm still sitting here trying to process what it was that I just read. I had assumed from the cover and the synopsis that I would be reading a historical romance novel. And to be fair, the time period lines up, but that is where anything even remotely historical about this novel ends. 

Let's start at the beginning when little Lord James (the only son of a Duke) is eight years old. He goes to the docks with his tutor to see the shipping company that his family owns. It is stated that his grandfather was the one to open the business, and also that he is never to mention that his family owns it because polite society looks down on people who dabble in trade. And while this is common knowledge, I'm curious how his father managed to keep his involvement in this such a well kept secret that he wasn't shunned. I overlooked this little tidbit because James was so excited to see the docks and learn how things worked. And it was actually kind of cute to watch him roll up his shirtsleeves and get involved himself, calling out items from the box of cargo he was unpacking to be checked off of the manifest. Unorthodox yes, but he was eight and excited to learn. 

But then the man in charge sends him off, ALONE to the ship to drop off one sheet of paper and in turn bring back more. Knowing that the docks were an unsavory place (to the point drivers being paid to bring people there stopped before they actually reached them), who in their right mind would send the OWNER'S eight-year old son (also knowing he was the sole heir) off on such an errand alone? And, as one might guess, things do not end well for the poor lad and he is kidnapped and forced to work on a ship. 

Fast-forward several years and we meet Sophie and her much older than her husband, who is the owner of a different shipping company along those same docks. These two have a wonderful marriage based in friendship (seriously, when they wed her husband told her he was too old and uninterested in the physical aspect of marriage and instead taught her everything there was to know about his business making her more or less a partner in that). Sadly, as older husband's often do, Josiah dies. But not after making Sophie the owner of his shipping company. 

Now if James being allowed to scamper off on his own wasn't enough to convince you this novel wasn't up to par with other historical novels, then the rest of my review should. 

You see, despite loving her husband in a platonic way, Sophie doesn't observe a mourning period. In fact, only weeks after her husband's death, she comes into contact with James (who is I should point out one of her employees, although he has just found out he is in fact the son of a Duke). Not only does she seemingly become obsessed with him (and he with her), she concocts a plan to lure him into her bed and hopefully get her pregnant so that she has someone to leave her husband's shipping company to. At this point I became very confused because Sophie was raised in polite society (her father was a Viscount) and she knew just how cruel they could be considering all of her "friends" deserted her upon her marriage (to a man not of her choosing I might add), she would willingly have a child out of wedlock? Even if she doesn't care for polite society and their rules, she had to have known how that would reflect not only on her, but her child AND the future of the shipping company. 

James, being a hot-blooded man after all, agrees to bed her. Although her invitation for him to get her with child and then have nothing more to do with said child angers him, he keeps it together because he has decided that he is in love with her and wants to make her his wife. Yup. After knowing her less than a month, he's in love and knows she will be his Duchess. But he doesn't tell her of his newly acquired position because he knows she was treated unkindly by society in the past, and also because he wants to make sure she loves him in return not as a Duke, but as a Captain. 

This goes about as well as you can imagine, with her finding out the truth in possibly the worst way (which even leads her to considering asking the new caption of one of her ships who happens to be James' oldest friend if he would father a child with her, which tells me everything I need to know about how she truly feels). 

Eventually they work things out, agreeing to marry but only if (and when) their solicitors draw up marriage settlements that ensures that Sophie retains full ownership of the company (plus all property and money she comes into the marriage with). Not only is this highly irregular, but the fact that her entire reason for doing this is to pass the company on to their future kids is just.... odd. She doesn't want her late husband's shipping company to merge with that of her new husband's. But what if they only had one child? What if none of their children wanted to be stuck running a company? 

James on the other hand has been dealing with two unscrupulous family members (an uncle and cousin to be precise) who were stealing funds from the estate while his father lay bedridden, and instead of taking action against them he is told time and again to "let it go" because otherwise there will be a "scandal" and he has too many sisters and cousins coming out the following season to have even a hint of scandal hanging over his name. Of course, said relations pop into the picture to create even more unnecessary drama at the end of this novel, but suddenly not only is no one concerned about the scandal that will arise from that, but also no one bats an eye about the scandal of a Duke marrying a woman who is in trade. No one even stops to consider how their own children (daughters especially) will be treated. The reader is basically just told that they are in love and because he is a Duke, everything else will be overlooked. 

Listen, I'm all for a happily ever after. And even more for couples (especially in that time period) standing up to social convections  and forging their own path, but this was just not a good way of going about it. I think had it been a slightly longer story, with more character development and less instant love, I would have been more invested in their romance. 

As it stands, I will not be reading more from this series (although I am curious about Dinah's book as she was the only character I even really liked).