Avon Books Daring and the Duke: The Bareknuckle Bastards III

This book the Daring and the Duke is a fantastical book. Please read this one, it's book three in the Bareknuckle Bastards series by Sarah MacLean. It's a story of redemption reunion and love.It's amazing

The book came in excellent conditions

This third book in the Bareknuckle Bastards series absolutely must be read in order to fully appreciate the story. The other two books, as brilliant as they were in their own right, were setting the stage for this final story in which the villain becomes the hero. Fans of the other two books were concerned about how author Sarah MacLean would pull that off. As a faithful fan, I trusted she would do it and she did not fail.The relationship between Grace and Ewan is everything you could want from a romance. They are magnificent characters with a gripping, gut-wrenching story – both past and present. Childhood sweethearts in horrible, hopeless circumstances, he turned himself into her enemy, threatening her and their two brothers for 20 years and the previous two novels. The presumption was that he did it for greed and a title, but the reality is that he did it for love.Even before you know his whole story, however, you are willing to forgive him his transgressions because it is so obvious that his whole being is devoted to her. Although he was the villain for two books, I immediately fell in love with him and wanted him to have everything. And Grace, against her better sense, cannot separate herself from him. They simply belong together for all time. It’s an amazing story full of moments to make you sigh. The heart of the story was simply brilliant. That she was able to pull this off after the hero had been the villain makes it even more remarkable.What didn’t work for me – and why I broke with tradition and gave the book only four stars – is the rest of the story. I understand that the author has taken on a seedier side of London and is trying to present something edgy, but I think it went too far with most of it gratuitous, distracting, and inappropriate. Yes, Grace owns a brothel, but I have read other books that didn’t go into so much detail about the goings-on of brothels. The sex scenes were just short of erotica and, in my opinion, not in keeping with the characters. And Grace’s outfit of choice was modern steampunk rather than something appropriate for the time period, even accounting for the idea that she was intentionally trying to be bold and different. Even the final conflict at the end seems to have been written simply to make a political point (which she follows up with in the author’s note) rather than because it was necessary to the story. It was rather anti-climactic.All-in-all, the romance was the heart of the story and it was brilliant and lovely and everything I wanted and hoped it would be. But it almost got lost in the muddle of everything else written more to assert the power of women than to support the story itself. It was definitely my least favorite of the three books, but you can’t miss it after you have invested in the other two.

I just finished this last book in the series and have to say that it was absolutely fabulous. Loved the series, loved this book. Well done!

Daring and the Duke is the final book in the Bareknuckle Bastards trilogy, which was my first series I’ve read from Sarah MacLean. And of course after this I can’t wait to read everything in her backlist. This book you definitely should read the 2 previous book first, you will get so much more out of the story.Ewan and Grace’s story has been slowly building up over the entire series, so I was really anticipating their book. Because Ewan has been the villainous character in the previous 2 books, he definitely had some groveling and explaining to do in this one. I LOVED the beginning, lots of angst & pain to get over, Ewan & Grace have a very complicated backstory (along with the other 2 Bareknuckle Bastards). At the beginning of this story, Ewan finds out Grace isn’t dead like his brothers have lead him to believe for years. She ends up nursing him back to health, then turns around to kick his ass and send him on his way. The story then jumps a year ahead, where Ewan is back to fight for Grace. This book has a lot of dialogue, flashbacks to their childhood, and inner thoughts, which I felt like slowed down the story in the middle for me. It got a bit repetitive and I was ready for them to move forward I guess quicker than the characters were. 😆 I do get since there was 20 years of hurt, betrayal, and lies between Ewan & Grace and even his brothers (Whit/Beast & Devil) there was definitely a lot to work through. But even through the parts I found slow, SM’s writing shines through and once it did pick up again for me I loved how the book ties up!I think I set really high expectations for this book so while it didn’t exactly live up to everything I wanted and Ewan wasn’t my fav hero, I did still enjoy the ending of this series. I really loved seeing Grace’s conversations about Ewan with Devil, Felicity, Whit, and Hattie so much. They all had a lot of past to work through and seeing them do that together was very healing. And the ending/epilogue, ugh I loved it soo much!