Charming and sweet. I love Julia Quinn's romance novels - the heroines are smart, funny and independent, and the men are clever, gorgeous and always fall completely head over heels for the women. This one doesn't disappoint!

An unknown possible son of a duke falls for a ladies' companion, who couldn't possibly marry a duke (if he really is one...)... Also, *VERY* sexy! ( )

This was an entertaining read. I really liked the main characters but thought they could be developed a little more. ( )

When highwayman Jack Audley stops a coach to rob the occupants, he has little idea of how his life and that of everyone connected to the people in the carriage is going to change because he is robbing the Dowager Duchess of Wyndham and her companion, the impoverished gentlewoman, Grace Eversleigh. He is fascinated by Grace after the robbery and unreasonably bothered by the fact that the Dowager thinks he is the child of her much beloved middle son. He vows to leave the area without pursuing any of the things that are troubling him but he hasn't reckoned on the strength of will to be found in his presumptive grandmother, who has him kidnapped and brought to her. There he finds the intriguing and long-suffering Grace as well as the current Duke of Wyndham, who will lose his title if Jack's birth is proved to be legitimate. As the mystery of whether or not he is the actual Duke unfolds, Jack and Grace fall in love. A smaller subplot between Thomas, the current Duke of Wyndham, who stands to lose everything if Jack is proven legitimate, and Amelia, the woman he's been bethrothed to since childhood is left unresolved and is the focus of the second Wyndham book.

I generally like Julia Quinn's regency set romances and this was no exception. They are light and fun and good escapism. The obstacles her heros and heroines have to overcome to be together don't cross the line into the realm of the impossible and like Jack and Grace, in this book, they have good chemistry together. I do wish that the ubiquitous "immediate attraction" thing would fall by the wayside because I am skeptical of a touch from a stranger being burned into your consciousness but that's a fairly minor quibble here and one that, in any case, seems to be standard for the genre regardless of my personal preferences. Overall, exactly the read I wanted and was expecting here. ( )

Julia Quinn has done it again! This book was amazing, and more than enough made up for the disappointment of Minx. I loved the characters and I loved the plot which once again was original. Thank you, Julia! Grace Eversliegh has spent years playing companion to a bitter ungrateful woman. And her life has become the same old routine till she met Jack. Jack Audley is a highwayman who is completely content with his lot in life. So when his grandmother approaches him with a dukedom, Jack wants nothing to do with it. But if his blood lines do in fact point back to her, he will not be able to reject his rightful title. And the more he gets to know Grace, the more appealing his fate seems to become. ( )

The Lost Duke of Wyndham is a period romance. It's also incredibly solidly written, with hugely engaging characters, a believable-enough setting, humour, and some of my favourite plot points and characters. We have the dashing highwayman-turned-improbable-duke with various unsavoury and painful secrets; the highly intelligent, somewhat impoverished heroine in a rather untenable situation; and the attending tensions that go along with the strict social mores of the time period.

The plot moves along at a good clip, the characters are fascinating, and they don't stay the same. One of the wonderful things about this romance is that one never wonders whether or not Grace and Jack can get along. They do, and the question is more whether or not they're going to be able to make it work in society. The only small problem I had with the book is that some of the tensions surrounding the social taboos and so forth seemed contrived -- but that was because I knew there was going to be a happy ending, and that the social taboos would either vanish or be broken without any serious repercussions. So that's not so much a problem with the writing as with the whole genre. That said, the dowager is one seriously nasty piece of work, and there is no question that she can make life hell for all concerned; and therein lies the major problem for Grace and Jack, not society at large.

The dowager embodies everything that was/is wrong with class societies with strict rules. She is completely awful. And she makes a brilliant "villain" for the book because she's not completely unsympathetic. She's a product of her time, breeding and station in life, and she is also a very lonely old woman who has lost everyone dear to her. In some ways, her loneliness is her own fault, but in other ways she has been dealt some fairly cruel blows by life too. She doesn't complain of them, either. Not the big ones. And that makes me just a little more sympathetic to her.

The characters in the book, as I mentioned above, are not static, nor are they inconsistent, both of which can be problems with romance novels. Each character behaves in a completely internally consistent way; any surprises are only surprises to us, not to the characters themselves. And the surprises were set up believably without being broadcast.

Of course, I knew there would be a happy ending. It's a foregone conclusion even before I buy the book. The pleasure is more in seeing how the ending is brought off. Quinn doesn't fail here, either. The ending is suitably happy without being stupid, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. ( )