Review: A Duke who less than perfect
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 5, 2014
Many of the situations described in The Perfect Duke by Dawn Ireland seem forced to happen and actually work to make the reader distrustful of the story‘s hero Garret Weston, the Duke of Kendal.  The first time readers become distrustful of Garret is when they’re told he wishes his fiancée Lady Caroline Pemberton, the daughter of the Earl of Pemberton, was dead.  Not the start of an enduring and heartfelt romance.  He discovers from his brother Evan that she survived the boat accident which everyone assumed had taken her life when she was a child.  Over the years, she’s been raised by a vicar and his wife who gave her the name Cara McClure.  Now she is a budding woman.Garret’s distrustfulness grows when he convinces his brother not to tell Caroline or her parents or society about her true identity.  They keep her real identity a secret in the hopes, the reader can only presume, that Caroline’s father will not hold Garret to the betrothal formed when Caroline was six and he was still a boy.  Viscerally, the reader determines that Garret’s purpose in keeping the secret is so he can be free to marry Lady Regina Stanton.Garret adds to his distrustfulness when he exacerbates the insult done to Lady Caroline by having Evan’s 10-year-old daughter Rachel live with him, giving him an excuse to hire Cara McClure as the girl’s governess.  Granted, it’s a new twist on the governess theme but if he wanted to keep Caroline out of his life, why in the world would he hire her to be his niece’s governess, and why would his brother and his brother’s wife Penelope allow their daughter to live with Garret knowing his motive is to use their daughter as a pawn in a game that can only hurt Caroline?Although Caroline and Garret begin to care for one another while she lives under his roof as a governess to his niece, the romance lacks genuineness.  The reader can only guess that Garret is meant to undergo a change from the cynic that his grandfather had raised him to be, into becoming a caring companion and tender lover to Caroline.  The change is hard to fathom as Garret goes from ruling his household with an iron-fist to suddenly becoming a kind employer and attentive lover to Caroline.  The narration describes that it’s Caroline who stirs this positive change in him as she persuades him to reveal the pain and sadness he harbors over the loss of another brother Edward.  Expressing his wound is moving, but it has a contrived feel to it because the magic Caroline wields is common.  Many women in the story are capable of her insight, compassion, and cheery demeanor including Garret’s housekeeper.Peppered with fairytale motifs, the hero in The Perfect Duke is far from perfection and the image of Prince Charming.  Dubbed the Marble Duke, Garret Weston is a flawed character.  It’s hard to fathom him plausibly becoming the man that Lady Caroline deserves.  Even as he undergoes a positive change in his character, the reader wishes Lady Caroline would find a better man to give her heart to.