⭐️⭐️

I could not get invested in this book. The writing style confused me. Cecilia’s chapters were in the first person, and Felton’s chapters were in the third person. The difference fractured the flow of the story. The description of the book and the actual plot are very different. I felt I was reading a different book than I was promised. I could not warm to either Felton or Cecilia; both were selfish and self-righteous. Cecilia’s relationship with her father-in-law was creepy and made me uncomfortable. The story was also too long, I would have personally cut out one third of the length and it would still have been plenty enough time to resolve all the issues. I thought I would love this book, however I feel I was cheated. The premise was promising, but to me the story fell flat.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book through Netgalley and the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Captivating in every sense of the word. The spirit and dialect of the regency era is perfectly captured in this utterly enjoyable and engrossing book.

Rating:

4.8 stars

Wonderful novel about a romance during Regency England (early 1800s). I enjoyed the repartee between Cecilia and Felton. The story was easy to follow.

This novel is part of a series and I highly recommend these books for fans of Historical Romance novels.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Vanessa Riley's latest sees Jamaican heiress Cecilia Thomas in a dead marriage to handsome military man Lord Gantry. What was originally an attempt to save herself from subpar suitors has left Cecilia neglected and dissatisfied, alienated from her husband's family. The discovery that Gantry is actually a spy drives a further wedge between the two of them, especially as he prioritizes his assignments over his relationship with Cecilia.

When Cecilia's sister dies mysteriously, she sets off on an investigation. It isn't long before Gantry realizes that she's fled, and he's off to pursue her--both in the interests of keeping Cecilia safe and in an attempt to revive their relationship.

I wish this one had worked for me. Unfortunately, I found Riley's approach to the novel really stilted. And of course, Cecilia and Gantry weren't supposed to have a good relationship at the start of the novel--but I never got the idea that they had any kind of connection. The transitions between perspectives (the novel isn't a straightforward, consistent third person point of view) threw me off further, and I was never able to connect with either of the leadsI appreciated the inclusiveness in the novel--you could tell that Riley put a lot of thought into writing Cecilia as a Jamaican heroine. But I never believed in the love story. With that being said, I definitely want to try more from Vanessa, as I feel like this could have potentially been a really good read. I just wish the execution had been more... passionate?

Thanks NetGalley!

I haven't gotten super into the Regency Romance things. I read Jane Austen, but not since I was a teenager, and haven't done any Bridgerton. This was my first Vanessa Riley book, and I leaped into the 3rd book in the series. But the portrayal of a POC as the main character looked interesting, and I love a spy story!

Felton is a British spy who bumps into Cecelia while fleeing a job that has gone wrong in Demerera (Which I looked up to find is the former name of Guyana). Being the daughter of a wealthy man, her money is embraced by Felton's family, but her ethnicity, not so much. Felton continues with his work as a spy, while not really having anything in the way of a decent cover story as to why he is gone all the time (seriously, this should be SPY 101, Felton!). This leads the family to think that Cecelia was a marriage for her money and that she means nothing to him, and that they are free to treat her with the same distain that Felton appears to shows her. Felton has no idea what's happening at home and so is absolutely shocked when she physically leaves and is frantic when he can't find her. For a spy, he is pretty oblivious to things happening in his own home! There is a long road back to finding each other and seeing if they can or should still make their marriage work.

Things I loved:
- The pining! Felton's physical reactions to Cecelia's art were exactly what I want to see in a Regency Romance.
- Cecelia's passion for cheese, and food in general. This was an important part of how they connected.
- The guard cow. I won't say too much and spoil the surprise, but it was a quirky touch that made me smile
- Exploring Cecelia possibly not wanting to have children, and that being ok.

For me the pacing felt to go a bit weird towards the end of the book. In the earlier parts of the book, Cecelia's actions, or each time she runs away clearly moves the plot forward or reveals something about her or the characters around her. And then it just turns into "oops, there she goes again", and for me, at least, it seemed to get a bit old, and I really started to lose patience with both of them. But maybe that was the author's point?

I wanted a regency romance with a bit of difference, and the strong POC taking on the ton (and winning) was something that I has happy to see. This book really grabbed my imagination and had me reading late into the night, but left me with a satisfying conclusion!

Am I sleep deprived now? Yes.
Do I regret it? Absolutely not!

The first two books were promising, but this one is as confusing and long winded as its title. Why is the timeline so odd and jumbled? Why did these two people have to marry again? Why are they staying together? Who the heck are these people? My brain hurts from trying to read this, and I didn’t even get halfway through!

There's definitely an interesting plot here, but it got lost in the writing and lack of explanation. I felt like I was missing a lot of context related to Jeremiah Gladstone and his role in this story, almost like some of it happened in other books in the series. If I'd known that this series needed to be read in chronological order, I would've definitely picked up the other two before reading this one. This isn't necessarily a flaw in the book, just different expectations I have as a reader when it comes to romance series, where chronological order is usually not critical to being able to follow the story.

I liked the parts related to Demerara and wish we could've seen more of that. However, I wasn't very invested in the main characters. Much of this has to do with dialog; I frequently lost the thread of what they were talking about. This seems to be an issue with the writing in general. We also get way too many scenes where Felton is trying to seduce/beg Celia back to his side while she tries to resist, and after the first few times I wasn't interested in seeing it play out anymore.

The final instalment of Vanessa Riley’s Rogues and Remarkable Women series, A Duke, the Spy, an Artist and a Lie suffers from and yet thrives upon the one thing that pushes the story forward: the utter inability of the hero and heroine to sit down and tell each other the truth. It’s the weakest of a series which started out so strongly, and yet I loved the heroine and enjoyed the hero for the most part.  The problem, however, is the romance between them.

The wonderfully-named Lord Gantry, David Felton Lance (who goes by his middle name) is a spy for the Crown, assigned to work in Demerara in the West Indies.  After failing at a critical juncture of his mission to bring down a smuggling ring, he bumps into the adventurous Jamaican heiress Cecilia – Cilla - Thomas (the sister of Patience, heroine of the first book in the series) as she takes an evening stroll.  She lies to Dutch soldiers - who accuse them of suspicious behavior - that he is her escort in order to get them out of trouble. This leads to Cilla and Felton becoming fast friends, and the two of them impulsively agreeing to enter into a marriage of convenience.

For Cilla, it’s a way to get away from the marriage mart and the many men who want to wed her for her fortune instead of true love, and she deeply wants to pursue her love of painting.  Felton will gain a mother for his two children, money for his estate, and the marriage will protect him from the Dutch soldiers trying to kill him (and who have successfully killed his colleagues).

The marriage is set in stone, but when Lord Gantry stows Cilla away at his London home after the ceremony while he goes off to continue his thinly-explained spying missions, Cilla becomes fed up with his excuses. The marriage is companionable but lacks honesty; the children, Amelia, and Agatha, thrive, she makes a friend in her father-in-law, the Duke of Tramel, and she has all the time she wants to paint.  But the rest of his family refuses to respect her authority as Felton’s wife, and her wishes, especially instructions to the servants, are often ignored or circumvented by his sister, Lady Jane, and the household staff.  Most everyone ignores her except for the children and Tramel, and she buries her feelings in her art, paintings only they get to see.

While Cilla feels the need to hide her true emotions from Felton, he feels the need to lie to her to protect his work, leading to a never-ending cycle of missed milestones, and them constantly fighting and making up. She doesn’t know that he’s trotting the globe looking for the double agent who betrayed his comrades, resulting in that disastrous night on Demerara.  He’s not there when her father dies. He falsely accuses her of infidelity with his odious cousin Gladstone (who in fact tried to assault her), and she storms back home. There, Cilla’s sister Helena passes away of childbed fever after delivering a baby in the underbrush, the result of being seduced, married, abandoned and sold into slavery by – you guessed it – Gladstone, the same cousin Felton accused Cilla of having an affair with, and who is now making eyes at Lady Jane. Cilla finds herself taking care of her newborn nephew, Noah, and promptly devotes her life to taking down the evil cousin.  Possessed with a new purpose, she makes contact with Widow’s Grace, an organization which helps women to claim revenge on those who try to mistreat and oppress them. They give Cilla a new identity, and she takes the baby to Covent Garden and gets to work.

As far as Felton knows, however, his wife has abandoned their marriage, and he is devastated and remorseful.  Months later, a chance encounter gives them a second chance at love, but can they figure out how to be truthful with one another this time?  Since Felton thinks Cilla is hiding their child from him, you can bet on a bumpy ride.

All of those plot twists happen within the first hundred pages of A Duke, The Spy, An Artist and A Lie, which is a rich novel loaded with Riley’s usual deep, dark angst and drama. But it’s never a good sign when I want the heroine to be with someone else, and I kept hoping that The Duke of Tramel and Cilla might find love together, in spite of her protestations that they were only friends (and the fact that he’d mishandled Lady Jane and Felton’s childhoods with multiple bad marriages and poor custodial situations.)  That doesn’t mean Felton is a bad guy, and he has a reason to lie (at least at first), but the only reason the book’s conflict goes on for so long is because Felton makes assumptions and Cilla, understandably, refuses to trust him with her truth. On one hand, this lack of trust is understandable – his response to her questions is to pamper her into forgiveness with food and foot rubs – on the other, one wants to sit this couple down and plead with, nay, beg them to talk.  Eventually Felton has to learn to share his life with Cilla, but it takes too much of the book for them to get there, especially with Gladstone lurking about.

The plot is sufficiently twisty and will break your heart, and I genuinely liked Cilla and Felton as people.  As always, the author’s research is impeccable, and Riley has a way of writing about food that makes her prose completely edible. But A Duke, the Spy, an Artist, and a Lie couldn’t quite make me root for the central couple, even though everything else definitely brings the book into B territory.

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I received an advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley for my honest review.

I enjoyed the first two books in this series, but this book didn’t work for me. The Widow’s Grace, a group of widow’s providing help to women in need featured prominently in the first two books, takes a backseat in this book. Felton is a spy working for the British government. He meets Cecilia while on a mission to Demerara, and they enter into a marriage of convenience, that becomes more. I had a real hard time getting through this book. The first part of the book felt like I started a movie, fast forwarded 15 minutes, then another 15 minutes. I had no buy-in on the relationship, and I really didn’t care for either character. At about the 50% mark of the book, I started to like and understand Felton, Cecilia, not so much. By the end of the book, when Cecilia pushed him away yet again, I was like “let her go, there are other fish in the sea”.

This is book 3 in the Rogues and Remarkable Women series. The first two have more suspense with the main characters and the Widows Grace organization. Here, we are fully in the emotions and internal conflict of Cilia and Felton, with some external conflict. It's an early marriage of convenience between two people who are attracted to each other, that becomes a marriage in trouble and will they save their marriage and their families.

As with the others in the series, there are many tangled relationships involved. Family is complicated and this is no exception. Felton is the son of a duke, Tramel, and they have a terrible relationship. Felton is also a spy for the war department. On a mission in the Caribbean, he meets Cilia. While many are trying for Cilia's hand in order to gain her dowry, Felton and Cilia have instant chemistry. Oh and she saves him from soldiers while he's on a mission. It's slightly more than a marriage of convenience, but they also don't know each other or take any courting time. When Felton brings Cilia to England, he does not stop his spy activities and continues to disappear for months at a time. This leaves Cilia alone with Felton's children from his first marriage, his bitter sister, Jane, and others who feel the Black woman is an unwelcome foreigner. Cilia has to deal with not knowing the culture, rude family and servants, and missing her own sisters. She's also on the autistim spectrum and overstimulated by noise. Her outlet is her art and she is very gifted. But she hides it from everyone except Tramel, which only creates another obstacle for Felton and Cilia to overcome. The tangled connections of the female main characters of the first two books to Felton and Cilia are revealed, as are more entanglements between Cilia and Felton's respective families. It all plays out in a more linear fashion than the first two books, which helps keep all of it straight. I appreciate that no one is living in a vacuum here. Everyone has family and messy relationships and a point where they have to decide who is important and who are they protecting and loving. It makes all of the assumptions that both Cilia and Felton have about each other, make sense. Instead of too many "they should talk!" situations, one can see how there would be misunderstandings. And the characters both also say, "we should talk!"

I thought the portrayal of how Cilia was dealing with both racism and resentment, while also feeling lonely and abandoned, on top of missing her own family, made for a rich and complex character. Her strength in deciding to find her family and take care of herself, when the very world was against her and she knew it, was well done. She knew how to use her talents to support herself, while still trying to not draw attention to herself and stay safe. Then with Felton, she was not willing to stay where she wasn't respected or to settle for less than she deserved. I was constantly cheering for her. Having a character on the autistic spectrum is an important representation and it felt well done to me.

With Felton, I wanted to shake him. Foolish man who has it easy as the son of a duke! He does continually wake up over the course of the book, but does he ever jump to conclusions quickly. Luckily, he's also capable of saying I'm sorry. And he will fight for the right thing. So we weren't dealing with a reformed scoundrel, only someone who needed to learn some hard truths and learn how to not hide himself away so much. His life with his father and his life as a spy, have both created walls he keeps around himself., but he learns. He is a good man and his heart is in the right place, and that fundamentally helped keep me on his side through his mistakes and as he makes amends and works to keep Cilia as his wife.

I think the pace was quicker in this one than in the other two, but readers should not expect the pace of a romantic suspense. This is very internal and thought driven, and those feelings and emotions need a lot of time to work out. Sexy times are referred to, some light description on the page, nothing explicit. The historical elements are vast and I appreciate the full world that Riley portrays. It is important that the slave trade is included and not ignored. We see the racism and misogyny that Cilia experiences in London while on her own, in addition to the poor treatment by Felton's sister specifically. All of this is realistic and I'm glad it is included. It's important for the world building and to show what the characters are dealing with. The author's note has more information for those who wish to learn more accurate history.

I really enjoyed this one and have enjoyed this series. Each one has been a full experience that I sit with for a long time and think about, and this one is no different. I am always fully engrossed.

CW: racism, enslavement and the slave trade, murder

*Received a copy for review.*
This book was a difficult read for me. I had a really hard time getting to know the characters because all of the things going on in the world.
The book was not so much about a couple who married hastily and then struggled to connect as it was about a man who was very entangled in his job and I woman desperate to save her family from terrible circumstances.
All of the characters were very one dimensional and thus it just did not work for me.

Ms. Riley is a new-to-me author, so I did not have any particular expectations going into the book. This is the third book of the Rogues and Remarkable Women series, and
after reading this I realize I have been missing out! Although I got the feeling the series is best read in order, I still enjoyed this story very much. A sort of second chance romance between Cecilia and Felton, who are actually already married. It just takes Felton some time to realize how much he loves his wife and not let his work come in the way of her knowing it. It was a beautifully written story that captured my attention from the start and held my interest till the end. The interactions and dialogue between the two were thoughtful and filled.with meaning and I enjoyed the characters and the story overall. I will be looking forward to reading more of this authors' work in the future.

I received a complimentary copy from Netgalley and am voluntarily leaving my review.

This third entry into the Widows Grace series didn’t disappoint at all. Gantry’s obsession with his attempted murder was ridiculous. It i got it . Their relationship with gantry and Cecilia had me in absolute knots and frustrated at times

Yasss! I absolutely loved this story. I loved the usual things from a Vanessa Riley romance. The incorporation of a black man, also that slavery is a part of the story in some way. This angle is not usually written in romances and I am glad to read it.

I loved that Cecilia is a thick woman who pants and wants adventure. She married Felton for the adventure and what he can contribute to her life. She was disillusioned to find that what she got is an absent husband and a family who hated her.
Felton is in love with his wife, he's just realized the way too late. He's left her for work on to many times

This is a second chance romance. A beautiful story that I couldn't put down

Widow's Grace is back! The organization, which helps women, this time is supporting Cilia, a Jamaican heiress married to Felton (Lord Gantry) when she sets off to find out the truth about what happened to her sister. Cilia has been miserable in England- Felton's family does not treat her well and he's always off being, well, a spy. When she leaves, however, he realizes that he's more tied to her than he thought and now the two of them are playing a cat and mouse game. She has, however, stirred up a hornet's nest and he will, of course, rescue her. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, A good read for fans of the genre.

Thank you to NetGalley, Kensington Books, and Vanessa Riley for this ARC . This is my honest opinion and review.

I waited not so patiently for the third book in the Rogues and Remarkable Women Seried, by Vanessa Riley. I was slightly disappointed, for me the book started slow. The marriage between Felton and Cecilia was a constant back and forth both using a form of trickery on each other.

The relationship between Cecilia and Felton's father Tramel was very disconcerting, but came full circle as the story continues in addition answer to questions from book one and two become very clear.. I enjoyed the revisit with the secret society The Widow's Grace..

I would suggest the Rogues & Remarkable Women series be read in order to obtain a clear understanding of a part of our historywhich has not been told in a way to honor us as a people or women until Vaness Riley begin to tell our stories.

#Duke #MamaToni'sBookNook #CillasBookManiacsManiacs #KensingtonBooks #Booknerd '

I read this a while back had mixed reactions - so took a break, and re-read it before reviewing.

I still have mixed feelings on this.

Gantry and Cecilia - it started very cold but as I read it further I felt them to be 'made for each other'.

A different way of writing from what I am used to and a different but interesting storyline. Yet, I couldn't understand many things. If I had read the previous two books, I might be able to relate better.

There were several characters which includes the previous books' MCs and key players who must have featured in the previous books as well.


Note:

I dived into it without even reading the description since the cover looked interesting. So did not realize it was a part of a series (my fault- description mentions "final installment").

The previous books in the series seem promising and are available in KU. So when read them, I might revisit this and update the review.

this was my first ever historical romance book and i have to say it didn't live up to expectations. i struggled with the writing and found that i didn't really like either main character, the concept of arraged marriage was what drew me to requesting this book but i didn't enjoy the dynamics. i don't have much to say about it because i struggled while reading and i found myself skimming it often.

I’ve sometimes struggled with Vanessa Riley’s characters and writing style, and unfortunately, this book is no different. I simply didn’t like either main character. Neither of their choices made any sense to me. And I found Cecilia’s relationship with her father-in-law very creepy. I’m glad I stuck with the series for the historical and cultural factors, but that’s about it.

I have been anxiously waiting to learn more about Patience's missing sister, so I was super excited to read this book. Lord Gantry's life is in danger when Cecelia helps get him out of trouble. They quickly realize a marriage of convenience could solve many of their problems, but for Cecelia life in England isn't what she hoped and she leaves for her own adventure while Lord Gantry uses his skill and network to try to find his missing wife. I love the mystery of this book and the way Lord Gantry and Cecelia have to slowly build back their relationship.