The Duke Effect

The Duke Effect by Sophie Jordan is book 7 in The Rogue Files Series. This is the story of Eleanora ‘Nora’ Langley and Constantine ‘Con’ Sinclair. I have read the previous books which did add to my enjoyment of this one but I did feel you could make it a standalone book if you wish to do so. Con has been summed home to his Aunt and Uncle who have raised him when his parents past. In their present day his Uncle is the Duke of Brichwood and Con finds that he is the now present heir do to his cousins passing. In addition his Aunt is having ‘spells’ that Con wants to help her with. Nora has no wish to marry and instead has become a expert herbalist. Nora has pretended to be her father to further her love for the craft in the man dominated world. This is how Con shows up on her door step looking for help but finds Nora. I have enjoyed this series and this book just added to that enjoyment.

Wow! This book was so unique but totally enjoyable! The characters were good and I enjoyed their different personalities. Nora was smart and an interesting character throughout, while Constantine was kinda uptight but I totally loved him. Their romance was steamy but sweet and had a bunch of cute banter and a bit of angst. The plot was solid and I really loved our bluestocking heroine. This is my first book by Jordan and it definitely won’t be my last! I can’t wait to read the first books in this series.

I enjoyed The Duke Effect where love and duty clash. Nora, a healer with aspirations to becoming a doctor one day and Con, a gruff soldier in line to becoming a Duke were engaging characters full of passion, duty and love which to me makes a great happily ever after.

This is an entertaining, well-written, steamy, historical romance novel. It has likable, engaging characters, an intelligent female protagonist, a hot, former military hero, the reappearance of the love potion, a heart-warming romance, and a happily ever after ending.
It is an excellent addition to Ms. Jordan’s outstanding “Rogue Files” series. Each novel can be read and enjoyed as a stand alone. I have read and thoroughly enjoyed each entry in this wonderful series.

Sophie Jordan’s The Duke Effect is the 7th book in The Rogue Files series. While the last book in the series, The Virgin and the Rogue, is one of my favorite books of 2020, The Duke Effect left me a bit bewildered at times.

In the last book, Nora infamously concocted a tonic to help her sister’s cramps. However, the tonic acted as an aphrodisiac as well. Read that book for the entire story. This is part of Nora’s role as an herbalist.

Nora spent years working alongside her father who was a doctor and is an expert at using herbs to heal. She regularly treats the townspeople and has been corresponding with others as well. The problem? She was corresponding in her father’s name.

Constantine Sinclair never expected to be heir to a dukedom. But when that happens he agrees to do whatever is demanded of him by the duke. He also wants to help the current duchess who suffers from mysterious muscular pain.

Constantine has been corresponding with Dr. Langley (Nora’s father) for years, so he travels to ask the doctor for help. He learns that the doctor has been dead and has been writing to Nora. He is outraged.

Constantine is angry at Nora for her deception and threatens to reveal her as a fraud. He leaves, but Nora decides to follow him to London to prove that she can help the duchess. She shows up at the ducal residence.

While waiting for the duchess to exhibit symptoms, she and Constantine get to know each other – and of course develop an attraction to each other. Eventually, Nora does get a chance to try and help the duchess, but things go a bit sideways.

And by sidewise, I mean that the duke acts like an ass. Nora and the duchess seem to develop a warm relationship and the duchess seems willing to let Nora try to help. Unfortunately, Nora’s presence disrupts the duke’s plans.

The duke has expectations of Constantine, ones that do not include someone like Nora. And here is where things sort of took a turn for me. Constantine loves Nora (yay) and well, the duke isn’t happy.

So, Constantine makes some decisions which I actually understood . . . but made me question what role the duke and duchess played in the story. Were they supposed to be villains or not? I’m still not sure.

I also didn’t entirely understand Constantine’s motives. He believes he needs to follow the duke’s mandates. He feels an urgent need to help alleviate the duchesses pain. And then he just doesn’t any longer.

So while I really enjoyed Nora and Constantine together and their courtship, I didn’t get the storyline that brought them together. The thread with the duke and duchess and their relationship with Constantine felt incomplete to me.

And yes, the aphrodisiac does make an appearance, and it is Constantine who takes it willingly. This might be my favorite part of the book.

“She had never cared enough to stop being who she was and change into someone else to be more likeable. She preferred being herself even if no gentleman liked her that way.”

Nora is the strength of this book. She is independent and refuses to concern herself with the “rules” of society, instead spending her days learning as much as she can about the world of medicine, despite females not being able to be doctors in her time. Sinclair is harder to like. While we understand that his parents died at a young age and he spent half his life in the military, he’s just a bit too rigid and unfeeling for too long. This is a super slow-burn that I’m not actually sure gets there in the end. Of course, there is the HEA but I didn’t feel the chemistry and it was too quick at the end for me to believe that the feelings were there all along. I had wanted more from both leading up to their getting together and found myself very often annoyed with the hero. That being said, I read this in one sitting. It kept my interest and the writing from Jordan, as always, was solid.

While this book may not have been my favorite of hers, I am a huge fan of Sophie Jordan and will always return for more from her.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon for an ARC of this book. The opinions here are my own.

Constantine “Con” Sinclair had been serving in the army for years when he got the letter he never expected to receive – his uncle, the Duke of Birchwood is calling him home, all three of Con’s cousins have died and as improbable as it seems, Con is now the duke’s heir. He returns to London and throws himself into learning all there is to know about the dukedom and will do whatever it takes to please the duke and duchess, who took him in and raised him when his parents died, even marry his cousin’s betrothed. He is feeling overwhelmed and when the duchess suffers from one of her “spells”, Con recalls a doctor he corresponded with while he was in the army. He sets off to the home of the Duke of Warrington in Brambledon to talk to Dr. Langley and hopefully convince him to treat the duchess.

Eleanora “Nora” Langley now lives with her sister Marian, the Duchess of Warrington at Haverston Hall and has taken over her father’s role of doctor in the community. She has also continued to correspond with some people, using his name. She wants to be a doctor, but it is not possible for her to study medicine at a university in Britain. Instead, she uses the knowledge she learned from her father and from studying to offer aid to those in need. She has become quite proficient with pain management and had concocted many a remedy – to varying and in the case of her sister Charlotte, surprising results. Much to her sister’s dismay, she really has no interest in marriage or men. But all that changes when she comes across a very naked man swimming in a pond on Warrington’s estate – after falling in the pond herself, she firmly tells the man he is trespassing and demands that he leave. She returns home and is informed she has a caller asking for Dr. Langley. She enters the drawing room to learn the man from the pond is none other than Col. Constantine Sinclair, a man she has been exchanging letters with for years under the guise of her father.

Con is enraged when he learns the truth and refuses her offer to help – in fact he is so angry he says he is going to expose her deception. Nora can’t let that happen and even though he refuses her offer for help – she follows him to London and insists on treating the duchess. She will prove her worth and return to the country – because no matter how handsome Con is, he is not for her – or is he?

This was a well written, fast paced story with an interesting assortment of characters, a very slow burn romance, that has lots of obstacles keeping the lovers apart. I really have mixed feelings about this story, on one hand it was well written and the storyline was fresh, but Nora was not easy to like and Con really didn’t impress me. In addition to that, their romance – if you can call it that – was seemingly out of the blue and I don’t even know if they would have ended up together if the woman Con was courting didn’t basically tell Con to marry Nora. All in all, it was a fast, easy read, it is the seventh book in the series, but they are very loosely connected and can each be read as standalone titles.

*I am voluntarily leaving a review for an uncorrected eARC that I requested and was provided to my by NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.*

3.5 Stars
Despite being surrounded by her happily wed sisters, Nora Langley prefers botany to ballrooms and would rather spend a lifetime in her laboratory than consider affairs of the heart. An expert herbalist, Nora has been masquerading as her late physician father for years, dispensing invaluable medical advice. She corresponds with people all over the world, including an old army colonel. But when the man shows up on her doorstep, he is nothing like she expected—he is a young, handsome heir to a dukedom who suddenly threatens everything she holds dear. Constantine Sinclair arrives on the Langley doorstep in a desperate bid to save the woman who raised him, the Duchess of Birchwood … only to discover that the venerable doctor he expected is a bold and lovely charlatan. Furious at the deception, he vows to reveal her secrets. Determined to prove her skills, Nora promises to save the duchess in exchange for Con keeping her secret. Con reluctantly agrees
This is the seventh & I believe the final book in the series, it’s easily read on its own. A well written, fun, steamy read, which was just what I needed at the moment. It flowed well, I liked both Nora & Constantine but I didn’t love them & thought that the chemistry was lacking between them, that said I did enjoy how their relationship developed. Of course the love potion added to my enjoyment. There was much I enjoyed about the book but it I didn’t love it
My honest review is for a special copy I voluntarily read

Nora Langley prefers science and experiments to love and marriage despite seeing her two elder sisters happily wed. A skilled herbalist and healer in her own right, Nora has also been using her late father’s name as a physician when dispensing medical advice in letters. She has a robust correspondence, extending as far as an old army colonel stationed in India. She expects no harm to come from her writing and that no one will ever know, until the colonel himself appears in her drawing room and turns out to be the young heir to a dukedom, threatening to expose and ruin her.

Constantine Sinclair arrives at Nora’s door seeking medical help for the Duchess of Birchwood, to whom he owes a great deal. He’s furious to have been deceived and leaves as quickly as possible, declaring his intention to reveal the ruse to all Nora’s correspondents. Desperate to prove she’s just as qualified as her father was, Nora follows Con to London, vowing to help the Duchess if he’ll keep her secret. Con finds himself agreeing despite his better judgment, but Nora’s unconventional attitudes cause a stir in the ducal household and soon Con finds his rigid control slipping as he questions the strict sense of duty he feels and the pressure he’s put on himself to live up to the Duke’s expectations.

Poor Constantine was just awful at expressing himself and communicating his feelings, but when he learned to be his own person and stand up for what he thought was right he became so endearing. His decision to stop placing such import on his duty to the duke and his snobbery was excellent, even if it did almost come too late. It took me a long while to warm up to Nora and she’s still not really a favorite of mine, but I did appreciate her holding out for the respect she deserved and I definitely related to her bluestocking tendencies. She simply annoyed me with her castigation of Con for being angry with her when in fact her behavior was very presumptuous and her long-standing lie throughout their friendly correspondence was pretty wrong. This behavior in her earlier in the book also made her willingness to run from the duke’s ill treatment seem a bit out of character. Nonetheless, this ultimately gave Con the chance to shine as a hero and, though I would’ve liked to see more communication between Con and Nora, I did enjoy their story quite a bit and it was one of the best and most delightfully dramatic endings I’ve read lately.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Duke of Birchwood’s sons, all three died within a year of each other. He did not have an heir and needless to say he was heartbroken. So they had to find another heir. He was a cousin that had lost his parents and was raised by them. But he was a soldier and they had to bring him back to England.
Colonel Constatine Sinclair was in his tent when he got the news he had to go home. He was not happy. He had been in the military for at least half his life and thought he would be old and grey when he got out.
Nora Langley has two sisters. Both are married. Her father taught her all she knows, he was a Doctor.
In their time, ladies were not allowed in medical school. But she was gifted.
At first, I believe they did not like each other. He felt she lied to him and very angry was putting it nicely. He wanted help with the Duchess of Birchwood and alleviate some pain that she was suffering. Eventually, things calmed down and they spoke to each other. As time went by, I believed Con respected Nora and of course, she felt the same way. It was a sweet story and a different tale. The plot had a lot of action. The characters were engaging and both were stubborn. It is a gripping read and keeps your interest. I very highly recommend this book.
I received this ARC from Net Galley and voluntarily reviewed this lovely novel.