My Dearest Duke

August 1, 2022

As Lord Rowles Haywind, a newly minted duke and former divinity scholar, tries to keep his mentally ill mother safe in his ancestral home, he worries about inheriting the illness himself--or passing it along to his heirs if he ever has any. With his father gone and the ducal duties causing ever more pressure, he turns to his friend's sister, the steady Lady Joan Morgan. Joan is searching for answers to a secret that could change her life, and identity, forever, and is afraid to share with Rowles that she works as "the Saint," a codebreaker for the crown. As Rowles and Joan fall in love, they must work together to overcome their own personal scandals and tragedies. Thankfully they have their faith, friends, and each other. VERDICT Vayden's second book in the "Cambridge Brotherhood" series (following Fortune Favors the Duke) is a closed-door Regency-era romance with Christian elements that contains lovely writing and some surprisingly heavy themes, especially regarding mental illness, which is identified as dementia in the afterword.--Elizabeth Gabriel

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October 3, 2022
A duke falls for a spy in Vayden’s aimless second Cambridge Brotherhood Regency romance (after Fortune Favors the Duke). Though Lady Joan Morgan’s job in the War Office would seem to promise danger, intrigue, and espionage, readers should expect no such excitement in these pages; Joan mostly reviews documents. In comparing herself to her fellow debutantes she declares, “I’m not simpering, limpid, and boring,” which—apart from being an unsubstantiated claim—will grate on readers who are tired of heroines that must be unlike other women to be worthy. Joan enjoys intellectual banter with Rowles Haywind, Duke of Westmore, at a ball and the pair quickly develop an affection for each other. But Joan fears a husband would force her to leave her profession and Rowles worries that his addled mother, whose “mind fractured into shards” and who favors her dead son while treating Rowles with contempt, will curtail his future wife’s happiness. A tangled mix of unnecessary details and abruptly aborted subplots—including one about a mole in the magistrate’s office—only muddy the waters of this unconvincing romance. Declarations of devotion alone do not chemistry make, and readers will struggle to feel the emotion between this spark-less couple. This is one to skip. Agent: Latoya Smith, LCS Literary.