Ah, Ms. Quinn (aka Julie Cotler Pottinger) and her delightful books. As a side note about this author, she chose the pen name 'Quinn' so she could be near her favorite author in the library. Also, if you visit the Romance Writers of America website she is listed in the Hall of Fame as receiving top honors for several of her accomplishments many times over. In my opinion, all of her awards and words of praise are wholeheartedly deserved as I have yet to read anything of her I have found lacking in any way at all!
Back to the most recent series of hers that I just finished....
Two dukes of Wyndham
1. The Lost Duke of Wyndham (2008)
2. Mr. Cavendish, I Presume (2008)
Where to begin? These two stories are the same except that each is from the perspective of the two main characters of their respective books. The Lost Duke is the long lost son of the son that died and no one was aware that at the son's time of demise, his wife, that also no one knew about, was carrying their child. He was the second son (and most favoured by his mother) and would have become The Duke when the eldest son perished had he also not met his fate at the bottom of the sea. The second book centers on the third son's son who did become The Duke upon his father's death because at the time he was the only living (that anyone was aware of) heir to the Dukedom. The stories begin with a highwayman robbing a coach.
I will admit that it was hard to read the second book as I felt like I was reading the same thing again. And, truly, in some parts I was. Ms. Quinn repeated the exact words in instances where the four characters were (or at least at any time where there were a minimum of two from each book) in a dialogue or having a shared experience. Any thoughts, mind you, were then added from that respective character and thus that made the one book different from the other, but it still made it a bit less 'new' feeling.
It was an excellent series and very well done despite the repetition of events. I applaud Ms. Quinn's insight and creativity to pull off such a work. And making it two books instead of just one, which would have been very easy to do (and maybe more pleasant for the reader to not have to endure the same dialogue twice as well as shared events.) The end results are most enjoyable as Ms. Quinn is able to completely develop a character and keep their traits solely theirs. The heroines in each story are completely different, and the first book reveals nothing of the ending of the second so once the stories split from each other, so to speak, the ending of the second is uniquely its own. That makes it all worth reading (or re-reading as it were) the story.
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