The Other Duke by Jess Michaels

Narrated by Danielle O’Farrell

The Other Duke is the first book in Ms Michaels’ series, The Scandalous Flynns, and it tells the story of the oldest of the Flynn siblings, Raphael (Rafe) who is unexpectedly elevated to a dukedom he doesn’t want upon the death of a distant cousin. It’s a fairly short story, lasting for a little over seven hours in audio, and it begins well; but ultimately, it does not contain enough material to sustain a full-length (albeit short) novel. After the first couple of hours, it seems to be padded out with sex scenes that, while well written, are largely irrelevant.

Seraphina McPhee has been engaged to marry the heir to the dukedom of Hartholm for years, and has been desperate to find a way out of the betrothal for just as long. When her fiancé dies unexpectedly, she is hugely relieved and looks forward to finally being free to live her own life – only to discover that the betrothal contract was worded in such a way as not to stipulate the identity of her intended, referring to him not by name but by title. Seraphina’s wily father thus ensures that her marriage to a duke’s heir will go ahead – just that the bridegroom will be a different man.

Raphael Flynn is quite happy with his carefree existence and has no wish to be a duke or a husband. But the contracts stipulating his marriage to Miss McPhee are water-tight and he has no alternative but to honour them. When he meets Seraphina, however, his disinclination ebbs as she is both beautiful and intelligent and he starts to think that perhaps marriage won’t be such a bad thing after all. Unfortunately, however, Seraphina very quickly puts paid to that train of thought when she tells him that she wants a marriage in name only and wishes to have a separate establishment. Rafe points out that he will need at least an heir and a spare, so the couple comes to an arrangement. They will consummate their marriage and come together for the purpose of procreation, but will otherwise live completely independently of each other.

Seraphina has good reason for not wanting to marry either of her fiancés. The first one raped her repeatedly, giving her, quite naturally, a disgust and fear of men and intimacy which extends to Rafe by default. One of the things that works well about the central relationship is that the couple talks to each other honestly, so that when, on their wedding night, Rafe realises something is wrong, he has nothing but sympathy for Seraphina’s situation, removing them immediately from the ducal house and her bad memories. In this he shows himself to be a kind, considerate man in spite of his reputation as a bit of a scoundrel (although listeners are never privy to his supposed rakish activities).

Rafe naturally wants to show his new wife that not all men are rutting bastards and that physical intimacy can be pleasurable rather than something to be feared. Given the set-up, it’s a necessary part of the story for Rafe to be able to help Seraphina overcome her fears, but this happens quickly – before the half-way point of the book – which is why I said at the beginning that the rest of the sex scenes are largely irrelevant. After that key one, the others felt like sex for the sake of it rather than being crucial to the progression of the story, and had I not been listening for review, I may well have fast-forwarded through the rest of them.

My main issue with the book as a whole is that there is an almost complete lack of conflict. What little there is stems from Seraphina’s oft reiterated desire for a house of her own, even though it’s very clear that she and Rafe like each other and are deeply attracted to one another. I could understand where Seraphina was coming from when she didn’t know Rafe from Adam, but once she got to know him, it made no sense for her to continue to insist on their living apart.

There is also a secondary plotline in which it seems that someone is out to do Rafe harm, but it isn’t well developed so that the final section of the story – in which this aspect of the plot is escalated – comes almost completely out of the blue and crosses the line into the overly melodramatic.

Danielle O’Farrell isn’t a narrator I have heard of before and, as I am sure my fellow AudioGals will attest, there is always a degree of apprehension when listening to an unfamiliar narrator for the first time. I’m pleased to be able to report that on the whole, Ms O’Farrell does a good job, performing both narrative and dialogue at a good pace and with a suitable degree of expression. She has an attractive, melodic voice in the mezzo-soprano range, and even though she does not lower her pitch very much to portray the male characters, she nonetheless makes them sound suitably masculine by a variation in timbre and the addition of a slightly harder edge to her tone. She differentiates well between the female characters but is less successful with the men, particularly with Rafe and his younger brother, Crispin, and I often had to pay attention to the dialogue tags in order to work out who was speaking in their scenes together.  Given the large number of sex scenes in such a short book (there are four or five – I lost count after two!) I paid particular attention to her performance in that regard, and she acquits herself well, creating an atmosphere of intimacy between the couple without going over the top. I noticed a few mispronunciations here and there, some which she corrected (for instance, she pronounced “viscount” as “veecount” in some scenes, but pronounced it correctly in others), and others which she didn’t – cravat rhymes with “hat” and not “art”; “reticence” was pronounced “reTIshence” for some strange reason and “whoa!” rhymed with mower.

If you’re in the mood for a short listen with plenty of steam then you might enjoy The Other Duke, but I can’t really recommend it. I liked the premise, but wish the story had contained more substance and hadn’t needed so many sex scenes to pad it out. There are a smattering of Americanisms throughout – we don’t have sidewalks in England, we have pavements – and anachronisms (the “ton” is not the same as “the Upper Ten Thousand”, which was a phrase not coined until 1852), which is surprising given that Ms Michaels is a very experienced author with over fifty historical romances to her name. In terms of the narration, Danielle O’Farrell was a pleasant surprise and I certainly am not ruling out listening to her again.

Caz

Narration: C+

Book Content: C

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence Rating: Minimal

Genre: Historical Romance

Publisher: The Passionate Pen LLC

The Other Duke was provided to AudioGals by Jess Michaels for a review.