The Duke Alone by Christi Caldwell follows Lady Myrtle McQuoid. She has been forgotten at the family's London townhouse. She is sure they will realize their mistake and return for her. Widower Val Bancroft, the Duke of Aragon, enjoys being left alone with his dog. His broody nature does not enjoy the chatty young woman next door. When Myrtle detects a threat, she must enlist the help of the duke. Unable to leave her vulnerable, Val agrees to help Myrtle. Soon Christmas magic does its thing and love blossoms.

The Duke Alone is a very cute Christmassy historical romance. I liked how it took inspiration from Home Alone!

I’m going to be honest, this wasn’t for me. There was just too much going on with a bit of home alone, beauty and the beast and pride and prejudice wrapped into one. I feel like if the author had just focused on one it would have been so much better.

This book was fantastic. The characters had me hooked right away. I was deeply moved by Myrtle's plight and her constant feeling of being left behind, which kept me turning pages. At first, Val was a brute. Thus, his transformation was all the more moving. I did have some problems with Myrtle's personality. Funny enough, Val actually found all the things I found annoying about her endearing. However, there was no denying her fortitude and optimism, which ultimately led Val and me to overlook those minor annoyances. like her need to talk nonstop and fill the room with noise.
The focus on characters, I believe, was what I enjoyed most about this book.
Whoever enjoys a humorous tale with a happy ending should read this book and I can't wait to read more about this family.

The Duke Alone is a great historical romance about the importance of love, loss, and cherishing family. I wish it was steamier. Otherwise, I really enjoyed it.

I received an ARC of this book, from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.

What happens when Home Alone meets Historical Romance.. A series of hi-jinks, romance and healing.

I really enjoyed this story, loved the couple even though Myrtle is on the young side. I've read many books by this author and I know she can write some heat and it was disappointing not to have any in this book. One fade to black scene is not enough.

I am writing this review a while after reading the book so some of the minor details about the book I have forgotten, I still remember feeling happy and satisfied after I finished it.

I highly recommend it. A book to bring out and read every Christmas.

Whilst the premise sounded fun, I'm afraid this regency romance failed to really grip me. I'm still fairly new to the genre, which may have been part of the problem

It has been a very long time since I've read anything by this author. I liked the story for the most part but I just couldn't get over the age gap between Myrtle and the Duke for some reason. The storyline took me a little too fast. The duke when from being in exile from everyone to falling in love with Myrtle in a matter of days or weeks. I am willing to give this story another read, maybe ill feel different.

I liked thsi quiet holioday romance, and the cast of characters and really liked the two leads, quiet and lovely people who found each other.

I honestly was not a huge fan of this story- I love historical romance but I am not a Home Alone fan- I don’t think I’ve ever watched it the whole way through. The fact that this was inspired by Home Alone immediately made me a little bit cautious. I also didn’t love the familial relationship, nor Myrtle’s attitude of self-pity. I don’t like change, I whine about it sometimes, but it does not make a character particularly likable. I also am not a huge fan of the widower trope. If you do love Home Alone, try this out… but I think a lot of the story was lost on me.

Hundreds of things are rattling around in my mind to describe this book! Marvelous, fantastic, superb ... just aren't strong enough to describe the talented Caroline Warfield's 1st book in her Entitled Gentlemen series. Gideon, our brooding hero and Mia, our strong-willed heroine are thrown together amid a house of bad memories, a hateful staff, a scheming relative (or two). Oh, you just have to read the book to find out how these two sift through truth and fiction to come together. Again, hundreds of things I can write but I don't want to give anything away. LOL

I love Christi Caldwell but unfortunately, I had formatting issues with this book.

As always, I will be buying this and I'm sure it is as fabulous as her other books!

Poor thing! Myrtle's family literally forgets about her and goes off on vacation. Good thing her neighbor Val is in residence.. Oh he doesn't think so at first, but we know where this is going! Fantastic story and I just love this author!

Historical romance,typical of the genre. Brooding ,handsome hero, pretty naive heroine. An easy read without much drama.

This wasn’t for me. I read a few chapters and I could not get into it. All of the characters were terrible.

BOOK: The Duke Alone by Christi Caldwell
GENRE: Historical Romance
CLIFFHANGER: No
RELEASE DATE: October 18, 2022
This is a clean historical romance. Sweet Home Alone set in 1800 England.

Meh. A week in and I’m at 50% and have lost interest. Val is an interesting character and I like watching him begin to come out of his shell again but I find Myrtle to be too naive for my taste.

Caldwell delivers the romantic fiction version of Home Alone with The Duke Alone. It is quick, solid read, especially for fans of Caldwell. The characters are likable and you are rooting for the HEA. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

There's nothing better a Christmas time than a holiday Regency Romance. An angry antisocial Duke and a Lady full of Christmas cheer, both alone and deeply lonely. This was such a lovely sweet story and the Home Alone vibes were awesome! I can see myself reading this charming holiday tale year after year.

I voluntarily read and reviewed a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I enjoyed the first half of this book a lot. It was fun watching the dynamic between the two protagonists and coming to understand their struggles and history. However, in the second half I just lost a lot of the interest I had in the characters and plot. Part of the reason was because the climax that was built up was over very quickly and it happened in the middle of the book, not towards the end. Overall, it was an enjoyable book and I think most historical romance fans would really love it. It just wasn't entirely for me and I don't care for singing in books at all and there was a lot of it in this book.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Lady Myrtle McQuoid has never felt like she truly fits in with her family, and this Christmas season is no different. When she wakes up to a silent house, absent her noisy family, Myrtle realizes they’ve headed out for their seat in Scotland and forgotten her. She just needs to find food and heat until they realize she’s been left behind and return for her.

Valentine Bancroft, the Duke of Aragon, has shut himself away from the world since his wife’s death four years previously. He wants to be left alone, with only his loyal dog for company, and he has no use for his noisy magpie of a neighbor with her incessant chatter and forthright opinions.

But with Myrtle left alone and a potential threat to her father’s house, she has to find the nerve to approach the gruff duke for help and honorable Val can’t refuse a lady in need no matter how much he may want to.

I’m not sure what sort of vortex I’ve fallen into, but somehow almost all of my festive Christmas reads this year have wound up having heavy grief themes. This has been an incredibly difficult year for me with a lot of loss so that makes these books tough to read and I’m trying not to allow that to affect any of my reviews, but I do want to put that caveat out there.

This book was terribly sweet, and I did enjoy how things wrapped up, but it was perhaps a bit too sweet at times. There was a lot of lovely build up between the MCs here and then it all faded out into nothing and that did leave me feeling just a little bit shortchanged. Myrtle is the ultimate golden retriever heroine with Val as her foil, the ultimate broody duke. They are both perhaps just a bit overdrawn in their characters, with some of her behavior being just excessively silly and some of his gruffness going so far as to be comical, perhaps unintendedly so. Her being described as between childhood and womanhood when he’s clearly quite a bit older and much more experienced did feel a bit icky for me, but I don’t remember his age ever being mentioned so I’m not sure of the gap there. This was something I was able to get over when her age and the fact that she was about to have her first season wasn’t being mentioned, though it was mentioned a lot. Myrtle is so sweet and bubbly that at times she came off as a bit of a simpleton and some of her inner monologues grew very repetitive. She was also a bit judgmental and gullible, fully believing when they first met that Val had murdered all his servants and that’s why he was alone. Her character is a bit exaggerated, to the point that it was very easy to sympathize with Val’s wanting her gone, especially as she chattered in a fairly condescending manner at first, hardly allowing him a word edgewise. His story was incredibly tragic and that seemed to cheapen it a bit for me, though I believe it was meant to lighten up the darker theme of the book. We also had the slapstick villains for that lightness, though only briefly, but their threat was pretty vague and there were large stretches in which they did not appear, so I had almost forgotten about them. For this reason, I think some parts of the plot could’ve been shortened a bit without damaging the story. Nonetheless, this author handles darker themes very well, but her dramatic style was a bit less suited to the sweeter parts of the book.

I really liked Val’s growth and seeing him rediscover the joys of life after facing so much pain. Though his transformation happens very quickly, and we don’t get to see very much of the changed Val on the page, it did wrap up the book on a very hopeful note. Given the bittersweetness of this season, that positivity was something I needed, and I only wish we’d had more of it. All in all, I enjoyed this sweet, if a bit slow-paced, read, and, though I did wish for more Christmas festivities and less repetition in the dialogues between Val and Myrtle, his proposal was especially adorable.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.