“Utterly delightful friends-to-lovers story. This is by far the funniest that I’ve read, and the most adorable too.”~ Buried Under RomanceJames Hargrave, Earl of Arden, urgently needs a wife. He’s resigned himself to a marriage of convenience and has even chosen a bride: Kate Honeycourt, his best friend’s sister.Kate has been on the shelf for years. Why, then, does she so firmly turn him down? … then, does she so firmly turn him down? Surely she can’t be holding out for a love match?
But Kate has a proposal of her own: she’ll find James a bride he can fall in love with.
Armed with a list of requirements, Kate sets out to find James the perfect wife. But things don’t progress as either of them expect…
A Regency romance featuring an earl who needs to marry in a hurry, the spinster he turns to for help, and a list that grows…and grows…and grows.
(The Earl’s Dilemma was previously published under the penname Emily May.)
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A classic Regency romance with a perfect conflict—Kate, the heroine, hears James, the earl, declare that he’d never love her or feel passion for her, but she’s the only sensible woman he knows, and he must marry by his birthday. So, sensible woman that she is, Kate sets about finding a woman he can feel passionate about—because of course she’s loved him for years. And each lovely woman she presents to him is flawed, until he realizes, almost too late, what a fool he’s been. And how does he convince Kate of that after what she’s heard him say? Personally, I would have tortured him or beat him over the head, but the story is quite delicious. Read if you’re in the mood for light romance.
Enjoyed it greatly. How does he break through to her after she heard his ill-advised words about her?
Caught in a priest hole while James explains his predicament to her brother that he needs to marry soon to save his inheritance, Kate hears him admit he could not be faithful to Kate. She’s loved James for years, but now refuses his proposal determined to avoid the heartache of a marriage with her love unreturned. When she offers to help him find a wife, he provides her with a list of musts and must nots. With each woman introduced to him, the more he realizes they pale in comparison to Kate. But how is he to convince her to marry him, especially as he is not aware she overheard his discussion with her brother.
This is a lovely written story that kept my attention throughout.
I enjoyed the ugly duckling aspect and the PTSD-afflicted earl’s growth and improvement as he embraces love.
Fun and fanciful.
I started out wanting to plant a skillet to the head of the hero. I later felt like handing it off to the hero to implant some intelligence in the heroine.
PLOT
The red-headed and FRECKLED heroine Kate has been in love with the handsome hero for yonks. She ends up being a very unhappy eavesdropper when she overhear him telling her equally redheaded and FRECKLED brother that, ho hum, he’ll offer for Kate, and he’s just so awesome and she’s so on the shelf she’ll do cartwheels in ecstasy. Skillet action.
Sidenote: the hero has to marry before his next birthday or all he’ll inherit is the title and one rundown hovel of an estate so the stakes are high and with an end date.
I was certainly pleased when the heroine gives him a polite but definite smackdown when he blurts out a proposal. She then offers to help him find a wife, and, boy howdy, does she put her back into the job.
After the third, maybe seventh candidate is a no, it was time to transfer the skillet. I got more than a little fed up with the heroine’s insistence that she wasn’t pretty enough, she was too bran-faced and too FRECKLED. Really the only two people that belittled her for her freckles were a gross suitor who was mad, and her insanely irritating older cousin.
The parade of potentials was cute, and the hero grows a heart and falls in love with practical, bran-faced FRECKLED Kate, and her brother falls for the very pretty best friend so all is well in Romance Regencyland.
Not bad for a fairly predictable romance novel.
Good, but ended abruptly