The Guardian Duke by Jamie Carie

The Guardian Duke is award-winning novelist Jamie Carie’s most exciting story yet, a uniquely arranged Regency-era romantic adventure where hero and heroine know each other through written letters but have yet to meet.

Gabriel, the Duke of St. Easton, is ordered by the King to take guardianship over Lady Alexandria Featherstone whose parents are presumed dead after failing to return from a high profile treasure hunt. But Alexandria ignores this royal reassignment, believing her parents are still alive and duly following clues that may lead to their whereabouts. Gabriel, pressured by what are actually the King’s ulterior motives, pursues her across windswept England and the rolling green hills of Ireland but is always one step behind.

When they do meet, the search for earthly treasure will pale in comparison to what God has planned for both of them.

Oh dear, this book confused me and I am sorry but this post is going to come of as a bit of a rant.
 *cracks knuckles*

And we're off.

Quick summery for you all.

Gabriel is made Alexandria's (that's ME) guardian when her treasure hunting parents have been missing for a year - for her own protection. Alexandria - of course - thinks that Gabriel is some old, decrepit lord with gout. Alexandria, refusing to believe that he parents are dead heads off to find them wile Gabriel follows behind trying to catch up with her and take her home.

There is an aspect f the story that is VERY random and would have been good if it had been developed further. When Gabriel first hears Alex's name he is mysteriously struck deaf, no reason is given for this. And THEN just as mysteriously it returns and then it  goes on the blink again. Makes NO sense.

Alex is a fun, if sometimes annoying heroine. She knows what she wants to do and she is going to get it done - although he actions did strike me as being highly immature most of the time and selfish when she would lie to get where she needed to be. But on the other side of the coin she was a refreshingly independent (sometimes) character, even if fibbing comes a little too easy to her.

I found it very hard to believe that through  a few letters (where she was FIBBING to put him off her trail) Gabriel fell in love with Alex. This was a little too unbelievable for me.

The genre is Christian fiction but it didn't strike me as fitting into this genre as other books that I have read do. Other than a few mentions of praying there is nothing much on the 'Christian fiction' front. I am sorry if I am maybe pigeon holing the genre but something that defines Christian fiction for me is strong draws on faith and a relationship with God, this are the things that I expect to find. And there was next to none of those things in this. It is clean, sex and language wise, so if that is why it is fitting into the genre...I don't know.

And the thing is (and this as the icing on the WHAT-THE-HECK cake) that Alex's parents went missing during what is thought to have been dangerous/suspicious circumstances because of what they had been hired to find. Alex knows this. Knows that what she is doing could be dangerous. And she seems to still go around blabbing to all and sundry what she is doing and why. It drove me mad. I was like 'What...What...Sh, shhh, shhhhhhhhhhh. What are you doing? Don't tell THEM. You don't even know if you can trust them' Bugged me!

And then there is the whole 'we are in a rush' thing. But she still makes time to go to a fare and get dressed up and go to parties.

The supporting characters were fun, although there appearances seemed a little too...timely, you know what I mean. E.G. Oh no we have to go to Dublin, what will we do when we get there? Oh, don't worry about that, I have a nephew in Dublin and I have been thinking it is time to pay him  visit - says the dude who came to her rescue when she needed it and just happened to have nothing better to do than tag along. Seriously.

The ending was pretty wishy-washy too. But there is a sequel to closely follow it so hopefully this will set straight all of the issues I have with it. With the way that book 1 ended I am actually wondering if the sequel i going to read as though it was all one big book that was cut in half.

Sooo...I would say 3 stars...no 2.5 stars, no 3! We will stick with 3. It was a quick read that did not drag so although I had all these problems with it I did not feel as though I had wasted eons of my life reading it.

**I received this book in e-book form from NetGalley**