gonturans's review
5.0
4.5* rounded up
Absolutely lovely, as always by Eve Pendle. The epilogue, simple as it was, was perfect.
Absolutely lovely, as always by Eve Pendle. The epilogue, simple as it was, was perfect.
emmalita's review
4.0
Eve Pendle starts Catch a Falling Duke off with a bang when Hugh Ravensthorpe, Duke of Cumbria, discovers his grandfather owned slaves in British Guiana (now Guyana) and that is the source of his family’s wealth. In horror, he flees his family estate. Dairy farm owner, Bea Fenton, is on her way to a job fair hoping to find the man her mother wrote to many years ago. They encounter each other at an inn and their one night stand becomes travelling together. She thinks he’s joking when he tells her he’s the Duke of Cumbria. He enjoys being plain Mr. Ravensthorpe.
One of the criticisms of historical romance is the way it allows writers and readers to inhabit predominately white worlds and ignore the sources of their characters’ wealth – colonization, slavery, and exploitation. It’s one of the reasons I largely stopped reading historical romance. Pendle has set up Hugh and Bea so that each of them is questioning their heritage and the legacies they will leave. Hugh is grappling with what he owes the descendants of those enslaved people, and what her owes his family and the title. Bea has come to suspect that the father she inherited the farm from is not her biological father and she questions her right to own the farm at all. When they work together, they support each other in making better choices.
Good genre fiction isn’t just about the story, but also about the reader. We can’t change the decisions made by others in the past, and we often can’t ask about their reasoning for the choices they made. We also can’t control the choices that will be made by those that come after us. All we can do is make the best choices we can now. We have to deal with the consequences of our ancestors actions, and we can make different choices now.
Catch a Falling Duke works best when Hugh and Bea are together. There was a section in the middle where they are apart and I struggled through. Once they come back together the book settled into a gentle love story.
I received this as an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
One of the criticisms of historical romance is the way it allows writers and readers to inhabit predominately white worlds and ignore the sources of their characters’ wealth – colonization, slavery, and exploitation. It’s one of the reasons I largely stopped reading historical romance. Pendle has set up Hugh and Bea so that each of them is questioning their heritage and the legacies they will leave. Hugh is grappling with what he owes the descendants of those enslaved people, and what her owes his family and the title. Bea has come to suspect that the father she inherited the farm from is not her biological father and she questions her right to own the farm at all. When they work together, they support each other in making better choices.
Good genre fiction isn’t just about the story, but also about the reader. We can’t change the decisions made by others in the past, and we often can’t ask about their reasoning for the choices they made. We also can’t control the choices that will be made by those that come after us. All we can do is make the best choices we can now. We have to deal with the consequences of our ancestors actions, and we can make different choices now.
Catch a Falling Duke works best when Hugh and Bea are together. There was a section in the middle where they are apart and I struggled through. Once they come back together the book settled into a gentle love story.
I received this as an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
restyourbones's review
4.0
Okay, so I enjoyed this... But I expected there to be more on page sex scenes than there was, so that was just a tiny bit of a letdown. There was times where it would mention they'd done stuff or times where it would fade to black. I wanted those actual sex scenes haha. I'm greedy.
cakt1991's review
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
4.0
I received an ARC from the author and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
Catch a Falling Duke is the third in Eve Pendle’s Fallen series. I’ve only read the prior book, and that was a while ago so I don’t remember much, but I’m pretty confident you can read this as a stand-alone.
I follow Pendle on Twitter, and she’s been hyping this book up, including noting the theme of anti-racism, particularly as relates to the Duke hero, Hugo. He’s recently inherited the title, and early on in the book, finds records that his grandfather owned slaves. I love the interrogation that he does of the issue, as he is instinctually repulsed by it, and is even more so when he finds out the true extent of how his family thrived while the enslaved people were persecuted. There are debates with another family member which feel like they are drawn from real life, with the family member saying things like “it was a different time” and “it wasn’t considered wrong back then,” to which he replies that it was always wrong in a moral sense, and people knew that, even if it was legal.
I also appreciate that Pendle is aware of her own limitations, noting at the end that this was her way of reflecting on her own position as a white author of historical romance, and the way select pockets of the subgenre (like Regency and Victorian) erase all evidence of slavery and racism to present a facade of escapism. Other readers might interpret this book differently, but I appreciated the care she took with this issue.
I also really liked Beatrice as a heroine. She is a great match for Hugo, even though she doesn’t believe it at first. She also is on a parallel quest exploring her own heritage, as she finds out she’s illegitimate, and she’s seeking the man her mother wrote to years ago. But what really stood out to me was the fact that she declares early on, with certainty, that she can’t have children, clarifying that this is due to irregular menses when Hugo tries to reassure her that perhaps she just couldn’t conceive with her late husband. As someone who has also been irregular, I liked seeing someone like me in that regard represented on the page, and it being pretty clear that the goal of the book wasn’t going to be to “fix” her with the hero’s magic sperm. And the fact that Hugo has this apathy toward his heritage means there’s no conflict over the issue either.
I did feel like the book did lean a bit more toward fleshing out his side of things than hers. I’m not complaining too much, given there are some weighty themes there. But given the elements in play on her side, I did want them to be given equal weight, and it felt like the book could have been a bit longer to flesh both out equally. And it also felt very uneven steam wise. Things get hot-and-heavy early on, but then settle into a cozier rhythm as the story progresses and each is on their respective journeys of discovery,
All that said, this is an enjoyable read that made me really think about my own historical romance reading. All historical romance readers should pick this one up.
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