Got to about 50%, then tried to skim the last few chapters, and couldn't even manage that. Interesting premise but the writing was kinda clunky for me. Scenes weren't all that climactic, because at times I couldn't even understand what I was reading. No real chemistry between the characters. What kind of name is Busick??

I saw this book on bookstagram and knew I wanted to read it. I absolutely loved it. It drew me in and I didn't want to take a break. Definitely did not disappoint!

I want to thank NetGalley, Kensington Books and author Vanessa Riley for providing me with an ARC of this novel.

I have never read this author before, and from the cover look I was super excited for this book. I love historical fiction, and having a main character who is a WOC is refreshing. The old adage of “don’t judge a book by its cover” comes in here. You think you’re stepping into a lovey dovey story, but it’s actually quite serious. I found the first few chapters confusing, and the author’s overzealous writing style was a bit much to swallow on occasion. Overall, disappointing read.

Thank you again to those named above for the opportunity to read and review this ARC!

The saying "You can't tell a book by its cover" has never been more true than this book and this cover. If you think this is a light fluffy regency romp about a Duke a lady and a baby you could not be more wrong if you tried. This is a serious book about the brutal fallout of war, a mothers fight to keep her child, not only to physically keep him but keep him healthy, and a baby who's life is turned upside down by greed and brought around by the deep love of two people for him.

Patience, our heroine, is a true survivor, she's willing to overcome anything and anyone that wants to take her child from her care. Once the mistress of a grand house but when her husband dies by suicide she's sent to Bedlam by a greedy relative that wants to control the fortune her child will receive. Enter a very Alpha male; The Duke, in the form of the baby's true guardian . He's dealing with the guilt of losing touch with his cousin, the baby's father. They were very close but after a falling out there was no time for resolution. He's also dealing with health issues from a brutal war and the Battle of Badajoz. Enter deception, health issues, moral issues and evil and you have A Duke, the Lady and a Baby... not a fluffy regency romp by any means..

The is complex but rewarding story. Alas I had two negative issues that I a difficult time getting past. First I found the author went a bit overboard with flowery phrases...... "Suddenly, so thirsty,I tried to extinguish my tongue with tea, but a sea couldn't quench my soul. It was on fire burning me."
That sort of language got really tiring and took me out of the moment. I also found it confusing when the author started writing in the first person in the beginning of a chapter, I was confused as to who exactly was thinking what, were the thoughts of a past experience or were they current? That sort of writing calmed down about a quarter of the way through the book so all of that aside it's a solid story and I'm very happy I read it. If not for the bad title, cover and over use of dramatic wording this would have been a 5 star for me but I've given it 4 (it would be 4 1/2 if possible) as it could have been improved.

I was given this book in exchange for an honest review by NetGally. I have never read any of this authors other works but from this read I plan to check her out.

Unfortunately did not finish this one as I didn't connect with the story or the writing style. Am sure this will be other readers' cup of tea though!

I haven’t read many books with a Woman of Colour as the main character. However, I didn’t like the writing; it was too confusing and the plot made no sense to me.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

I loved getting to read a historical swoons-and-stays historical fiction with a WOC lead. It was lovely to see her racial identity and how it affected her life experience acknowledged but also not be the one and only aspect of her characterization. I also appreciated the male lead (and co-POV) having the also-rare perspective in a historical rom-com of an amputee, a pleasant surprise that wasn't included in the rake-meets-widow description.. The progression of the leads getting to know each other was believable and intriguing. And there were enough twists that I wasn't entirely sure where things were going, even when I was 4/5 of the way through the book.

I love reading historical romance novels, so I was really excited to read this book. But, unfortunately, I found it disappointing. The book had a very confusing beginning. I couldn't even figure out what was happening for the first few chapters because the reader doesn't really get a clear explanation of what's going on for awhile. I think I would have felt a stronger connection to the book if certain details had been made clearer in the beginning. I also found it kind of confusing that the story alternated between one character's thoughts being told to us in first person and another character's thoughts happening in third person. It made it hard for me to really connect to the story.

This is my first book by this author and I was really excited to read a historical with a WOC as the heroine. Unfortunately, this book didn’t quite work for me.

The heroine is the daughter of a rich, West Indian businessman. She marries into the ton, but never quite fits into society. I thought that part of the book was so interesting. The hero is her late husband’s cousin and her son’s guardian. The heroine secures a position as a wet nurse/nanny in order to protect her son from her late husband’s evil uncle.

The hero flirts with the heroine, but I didn’t really see any chemistry between the two. The book also doesn’t really address the power imbalance between the hero and heroine.

Also, the cover, title and the tone of the dialogue didn’t quite fit with some of the more serious topics that were addressed in the book.

That being said, the Widow’s Grace storyline was intriguing, as were the side characters Jemina and Gantry. I will probably read the next book in the series to learn more about Jemina.

I enjoyed this book. It’s been a while since I read a Regency book. I enjoyed the story and the tension. I look forward to the next book in the series.

This book was hard to read. It was written in the first person and they made it a little difficult, but for me, the problem was the communication. The characters had the same conversation, repeatedly. It seemed as if the characters were trying to be portrayed as stubborn, but it became redundant. I mean, how many times does a 'no' mean no? In this book, 'no' had not meaning. The characters would just dance around a subject without making any sense for pages and pages. It was very confusing and that it sad because the story made a lot of sense and would have been wonderful if the conversations made more sense. I was confused at this and because the conversations were so confusing, it was hard to see where the grammar and spelling errors were. But they were there. This story was about a young widow who had been committed to Bedlam, escaped, sneaked into her home to feed her baby, but her deceased husbands uncle who had her committed was going to be kicked out by her deceased husbands second cousin and so she escaped from feeding her son by going out his window and then she had to climb down the ivy and then help the second cousin into the house because he was an injured soldier, and.....it just continues in this convoluted manner and story line through the whole book.
Not only was the story strange and circling, there was no continuity or smoothness to the read. It was difficult and I felt I had to interpret what the author wanted instead of just being told what the story was. It was like I was guessing through the whole book. Non of the characters were likeable or made by sense. It seemed like one would talk fuit and another answered him with chemical formulas. That is how discordant this book was. I do not recommend reading. No stars.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This is one of the first Historial Romance novels I think I've read.

From the moment I picked up the book I rather enjoyed it. It was very different from the romance novels I read on daily bases. I was intrigued by reading a novel that was set in the 1800s in England during the war. I also rather enjoyed the book because it focuses on a widow who is trying to right the wrongs that were done to her and she doesn't allow the fact that she is a woman stop her from doing what is write.

The book is about Patience, a widow whose husband committed suicide. Shortly after the death of her husband Patience is kicked out of her home, and her son is taking away from her. She had to choices to leave quietly or to fight for her son.

And fight she did, she would sneak back into her previous home to ensure that her son was well fed. During one of her trips, she met the duke, while she was disguised as a footman. Patience later returns seeking a job as the baby's nanny. During her time as a nanny, she and the duke fall in love and he makes her his wife.

A Duke, the Lady, and a Baby was an enjoyable read and I look forward to reading the other books in what I feel will be a good series. This book made me more interested in reading historical romance novels. I am glad to have had the opportunity to review it.

Vanessa Riley is an exquisite author and her attention to historical details is wonderful. I often feel that historical romances can be homogeneous often focusing on lords and ladies and mostly white lords and ladies. The reality that there were people of color and prominent people of color at that are often ignored or erased altogether.

That being said her romance writing is often a hit or miss for me. Then hero and heroine rarely do it for me in her books and I just can’t figure out why. I also have to admit that the beginning of the books can be difficult to understand if you don’t read the synopsis for the book.

The story itself encompasses a trope that I usually avoid like the plague and that is one of the main characters pretending to be someone else usually for revenge on the other main character or to try and get close to someone else. Because I love her writing I decided to go ahead and request this one thinking maybe I’ll enjoy what she does with the trope but it just didn’t do what I wanted it to do.

Patience is a woman on a mission. She has been thrown out of her home and separated from her son - she just needs to find certain documents that will help her regain her freedom. The man standing in her way? The Duke of Repington, a former rake with a penchant for rules and schedules.

I admit I was sucked in by the cover. It's quite good. But I just couldn't love the contents of this book. I liked the lead characters - particularly since it's difficult to find diverse Regency romance - but they didn't seem to have any real chemistry and their relationship went from A to B without much development. And I was distracted by the switch between first person and third person POVs. This looks to be the start of an interesting series, though I won't be continuing with it.

After having gone on a recent historical romance spree, I was thrilled to be approved for an early review copy of Vanessa Riley's forthcoming A DUKE, THE LADY, AND A BABY. I loved the description/synopsis that hinted at a West Indies mother pressed to the point of desperation, fighting against the unfair machinations of Colonialist England's racism, prejudice, and sexism in the early-nineteenth-century. While I cared about the main characters and felt for them, I ultimately struggled to locate chemistry between the Duke or Patience, and I also found the storytelling's pacing as well as writing style to fall short of my expectations.

What I struggled with:
- The female protagonist, Patience's perspective in the book is written exclusively in the first-person: "I talked to her; we went outside." But the Duke's is always (and typical to historical romance) in third-person: "Busick took a tentative step; he watched her leave." I can honestly say in my entire life of reading I have never encountered dual points of view being written from different "person" perspectives in a single story. It was incredibly distracting and I have absolutely *no* idea why an editor or anyone reading this pre-publication didn't stop and say, "wow, that's insanely distracting to be constantly jarred from "I" to "he/she". This made for deeply disruptive reading experience.
- The chemistry....wasn't chemistry. It was descriptions about each other's physicality, but there was so much back and forth bickering and what felt like empty conversations, it seemed like there was never a moment for tension to build--no pregnant pause, no longing glance, no moments of silence. I think the suspense plot in this warred with the romantic one, resulting in a lot of abrupt dialogues and few moments to build tension and desire.
- As the point above mentions, I think the romance of the story and the suspense were at war and didn't arrive at a satisfactory detente before this story went to publication. It could have benefitted from tightening up all page time spent on vanquishing Markham's agenda, and more solid moments shared between Busick and Patience.

What I liked:
- References to huge inequities and injustices in 19th-century England: Bedlam's corruption, the dismissal, and racialized hatred of POC, the deep financial deprivation of women (the entailing of estates, naming of children, male control of assets)
- The portrayal of an empowered, determined WOC, a strong core female friendship, and a gritty depiction of how hard it must have been back then to survive and battle injustice.
- The portrayal of war-wounds, costs, and the resulting disabilities; Busick was depicted as dealing with pain and challenges, but he was never a pitied character and was quite empowered.
- I loved the baby, and how he was the fulcrum for the Duke and Patience's budding romance.

All in all, this was a lovely concept of a story that to me fell short in a few critical areas that would have made it well-executed: unified "person" perspective (first or third--please just pick one), tightening the storyline's pacing to better develop their romance or at least more succinctly handle the suspense plot, and a finer, more nuanced hand at building character tension and connection.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington for this advance complimentary review copy. All opinions are my own.

I liked Patience and her absolute determination to protect her child, and her being torn away from her very young son was heart wrenching. The set-up with the Widows Grace is great , but I wanted Patience and Jemina to be fully in on the plans; it felt instead that the Duchess was keeping things from them for unexplained reasons. I would love to see more of the operation of the Widows Grace and how they discover their information and what their operatives are doing (and the danger involved in that.)

I could not get on board with the hero here. His insistence on a totally unreasonable schedule for a baby, his refusal to really listen to Patience, and his bringing said baby to a gaming hell to...prove a point to the baby's mother made him a jerk to me. And I'm not quite clear on why Patience's POV was in first person, while Busick's was in third; it was distracting and kept him at arms' length from the reader so that it was difficult to understand his motivations. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

Thanks to NetGalley and Zebra/Kensington for the ARC.

*** I”ve received this ARC in exchange for an honest review ***

I’m typically not a romance reader, but this story tickled my fancy. The story is interesting, where you’re trying to figure out the whole mystery around what happened to the late husband while our widow attempts to just live her life.

I enjoyed the additional bits that set this apart from what I expected to read. The inclusion of racial issues and disability was welcoming, even if I had to look up some information about some things in the writing.

The downsides for me were sometimes around the writing and how it felt like it dragged at times, though I definitely did enjoy this more than not.

I was really confused at the opening of this book. It took a few chapters to settle into the story and than I did enjoy it. It felt quite different.to the standard historical romances I usually read but not in a bad way. It would have been quite easy to give up after the first chapter to be honest as it felt quite mixed up. Some explanation of the ‘Widows Grace’, early on would have been useful. I felt it was a strange name to give the group and little real clarification was ever given. Maybe all will be clearer as the series develops?
I did like the storyline. As I put earlier it was a bit different to the normal romances and the interaction between Patience and Busick was well. written. Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for the advance copy.

**Disclaimer: I was given a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley.**

Title A Duke, the Lady, and a Baby

Author Vanessa Riley

Description from Amazon

When headstrong West Indian heiress Patience Jordan questioned her English husband’s mysterious suicide, she lost everything: her newborn son, Lionel, her fortune—and her freedom. Falsely imprisoned, she risks her life to be near her child—until The Widow’s Grace gets her hired as her own son’s nanny. But working for his unsuspecting new guardian, Busick Strathmore, Duke of Repington, has perils of its own. Especially when Patience discovers his military strictness belies an ex-rake of unswerving honor—and unexpected passion . . .

A wounded military hero, Busick is determined to resolve his dead cousin’s dangerous financial dealings for Lionel’s sake. But his investigation is a minor skirmish compared to dealing with the forthright, courageous, and alluring Patience. Somehow, she’s breaking his rules, and sweeping past his defenses. Soon, between formidable enemies and obstacles, they form a fragile trust—but will it be enough to save the future they long to dare together?

Release Date June 30, 2020

Initial Thoughts

This book sounded like so much fun. I love recency historical fiction and there isn’t a ton of that in the romance category that’s not gushing with graphic romance (if you know what I mean). I liked that this seemed like a good murder mystery mixed with a sweet romance story.

Some Things I Liked

Patience Jordan as a West Indian heiress. I loved that. Her character was super unique and the problems she faced were some that I hadn’t really seen explored in recency novels before.
The Duke with a handicap. I really loved the Duke’s struggle with his leg. He didn’t want anyone to know about it or think less of him but I loved seeing the way Patience didn’t think that at all and how she encouraged him not to be afraid because he was still the strong leader his men needed him to be.
Lionel in the bread basket. I totally had Baby Yoda in the floating bassinet vibes from the scenes where they carried the baby around in a bread basket and I loved that.
Jemina. I really hope one of the sequels is about her story. She seems fascinating. I loved her no-nonsense, voice of reason ways and I hope we get to see more of her.

Series Value

I love the idea of sequels for this book. I can’t wait to see what else The Widow’s Grace ladies get up to in the next installment.

Final Thoughts

I really loved this book. I thought the characters were dynamic and interesting and they had tons of sequel potential. I loved the setting as well – not enough books are set during the lesser known wars of the 1800s. I would absolutely continue with this series.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Recommendations for Further Reading

Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore – if you liked the setting and the idea of a league of exciting women taking back what’s theirs, definitely try this series.
A Brazen Curiosity by Lynn Messina – if you liked the themes of a lady who will stop at nothing for justice, the time period, and a duke trying to get her attention, try this series.

I had such high hopes for The Duke, the Lady, and a Baby, especially because the title was catching! The book’s summary plot is composed of a mixed race (West Indies) widowed heroine fleeing Bedlam, hatching a plan to take back her baby by pretending to be his wet-nurse, all while falling in love with her deceased husband’s dashing and honorable cousin whilst also sometimes pretending to be a man. See, this book had all the makings for a fun, adventurous and also diverse story (finally, we have characters in a book that aren’t all staunchly, boring white characters!), but after the initial intrigue of the stories beginning, the plot plummeted to nowhere slow. The Duke was a numbskull; I couldn’t stand behind a male lead that was just too stupid to compute what was staring directly in front of him. (Patience, the heroine, tells Busick directly to his face that she is not the nanny, but his cousins widow and he still does not believe it to be so.) There are ample moments that allude and directly point to Patience being the widowed wife of his cousin, not to mention the obvious fact that she is a woman of a completely different heritage, the same heritage as her charge— his ward— and there are no other people of that ethnicity around for many many miles… am I explaining this well enough for you? The ‘hero’ is dumb. I didn’t like or believe that Wellington’s major war strategist could not figure this out before Patience told him after 6 weeks of this nonsense! This still bothers me if you couldn’t tell. Patience deserved someone smarter and who knew his mind. I also didn’t learn much about the main characters as their development was stunted, so I didn’t know what it was exactly that made the two fall in love with each other.
Weirdly, I was still intrigued by supporting character Jemina’s storyline of being let out of Bedlam while still suffering from amnesia, however the plodding story made it hard for me to finish.


I received an ARC from the author and publisher in exchange for an honest review.