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London’s Most Elusive Earl is like a house with good bones (the romance) that gets lost beneath the dizzying and repetitive wallpaper that covers every inch of every room (the writing and plot).
Jonathan Cromford, Earl of Lindsey, has inherited from his deceased father two clauses – sire a legitimate son and retrieve three missing/stolen paintings – on which hang the money that makes enjoyment of the earldom possible. Lady Caroline Nicholson has recently returned from Italy to get herself a husband. They meet at a ball when she finds him trying to get at one of the missing artworks through the vagina of the wife of one of the paintings’ new owners. Caroline feels “as if their very souls spoke to each other” and Jonathan feels “a growing problem in his trousers”. I’d been hoping that the baby clause meant a Duchess Deal sort of book involving a marriage of convenience and lots of vigorous sowing of seed, but this, alas, did not prove true. This book mostly consists of unofficial courting, which goes on so long that Caroline eventually insists on an actual DTR (defining the relationship) talk while her nipples are exposed.
I tried hard at first to find acceptable reasons why the chapters felt so indistinguishable and, consequently, stupefyingly dull (I’ve never used that adverb adjective combination before. I’d apparently been saving it for an occasion such as this). Perhaps, I reasoned, the fact that the novel was such a blur was a consequence of the period and setting. Caroline and Jonathan spend endless time engaged in aristocratic leisure activities (house parties, balls) discoursing in a stiff manner full of courtesies and pleasantries. Maybe it was the formality of the society itself to blame! Then I remembered Jane Austen. This forced me to acknowledge that it is possible for a novel about the gentry set in Regency England to be intelligent, hilarious, fast-paced, and memorable in each chapter. So there went that idea. Also, Bryant has an odd obsession with the word “soul” which is used so abundantly throughout the book that I began to track its appearance as if I were playing a strange version of Where’s Waldo, though instead of looking for a bespectacled cartoon in a striped sweater, I looked for the word describing the ephemeral part of a living being. Final soul count: thirty.
I felt about Caroline and Jonathan the way one feels about good actors in a bad movie. I sympathized that the material didn’t do them justice. They’re a good couple – Jonathan’s soul catches up with his penis and does reciprocate Caroline’s feelings believably – and I found their warm-level sex scenes to be as sexy in atmosphere as the explicitness of other hot-level novels. If you hate Big Misunderstandings, they are also a satisfying couple. The third-act drama is so small you’d need a microscope to see it.
The baby-clause of Jonathan’s inheritance is dealt with unusually, as well. Caroline has fertility concerns due to the fact that she hasn’t menstruated in years, which the story blames on a riding accident (the medical plausibility of this confused me – if you’re in the field of obstetrics and fertility and know how this works, please let me know). What’s unique about London’s Most Elusive Earl is that there is NO Baby Epilogue. At the end of the book there’s no Miracle Fertility Resolution, although, since this is a series, I wouldn’t be surprised if Caroline shows up pregnant in a future book as a secondary character.
The only way I could have recommended this book were if I held to the belief that the best things in life are those which feel the most laborious. I don’t hold to that belief.
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Grade: D+
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 14/10/20
Publication Date: 10/2020
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Part-time cowgirl, part-time city girl. Always working on converting all my friends into romance readers ("Charlotte, that was the raunchiest thing I have ever read!").
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Trying to find this at my local book store but I can’t find one. The reason why I don’t order on Amazon is the logistics keep abandoning my orders outside my house and sometimes it will be stolen :( Do you have any recommendations on where I can find this book in London?
Sounds like maybe you should try ebooks!
From my experience – I’m a born and bred Londoner and I used to work in the West End right on top of most of the big London bookshops – you’ll be lucky to find much romance in bookshops anywhere in the country. (Romance gets even less respect and shelf-space in the UK than it does in the US). One of the main reasons I got into ebooks was because it was practically impossible to find the romances I wanted to read in UK bookshops; I’d many find a couple of Stephanie Laurens, Mary Balogh, Julia Quinn and Georgette Heyer, but that was about it. Most of the HR authors I regard as mainstream (Sherry Thomas, Meredith Duran, Lorraine Heath etc.) weren’t stocked even in the biggest bookshops, and I got all my HR paperbacks from Amazon before I got my first Kindle. I wouldn’t go back to dead trees now.
Also – this one got a D+ (and the books I’ve read by this author have been equally bad) so I’d suggest trying to find something good instead!
I’ve no clue about the answer, but was it legal, even in the Regency, for a will to have a clause where inheritance depended on siring a son? Fertility was a gamble, then even more than now, and I’d think the son would have a legal case to break the will. This kind of stipulation is one of my least favorite tropes in historical romance (and I’m sure it would be totally illegal today), precisely because I’ve a feeling it’s inaccurate, but, as I said, I don’t know for sure.
I suppose it might have been possible – if the property and money being bequeathed was NOT part of an estate that was subject to the laws of primogeniture, then I would imagine that whoever was bequeathing them could do what he liked with them.
BUT – an Earldom is not something possessed by an individual; it’s an “office” if you like, a peer of the realm is the “guardian” of his title and estates for his lifetime and would not usually be able to make sweeping changes to the way it would be handed on after his death. It’s like those stories where a son is told his father will give his title to his cousin if he doesn’t do X, or where there are two ‘candidates’ for a title and they have to perform various tasks to prove who is worthy. Er… nope.
English inheritance law doesn’t work like that, so I would think an Earl being able to make his son’s inheritance of the earldom dependent on his (the son) producing children is extremely unlikely.
You could break an entail but it was not easy and not cheap so any property or chattels within an entail went to the heir who would normally be in the direct or, sometimes indirect, male line. Property outside of the entail could be given to whomsoever the giver wished. The only exception to a title passing outside of the male line was when a title was set up to pass through the female line. There are still a few of these about. In earlier times marriage in the aristocracy was mainly about money and property so protecting it within an entail was very important.
I’m officially the only reader on the site to ever give this author anything above a D. I don’t know if it was the spirit of the season, but we are consistent on her output.
Final soul count: thirty.
HAH!
I’m very amused at them dragging out the old ’70’s “Had riding accident and can’t have kids” plot. Good on the author for no babies ever after though!
I liked her first book just fine. Didn’t love it.
I gave the book I had from her a B, so yep. Good but not great.
My mom had 4 kids in 6 years, then a car accident not involving those bits, yet never got pregnant again. She did not go after any diagnosis, as she had 4, youngest under a year, at the time. She connects it, saying that accident was the reason. We know less about how it all works than we think. And in those times, they knew even less.
just saying.
I think you can totes have infertility caused by trauma. It’s trauma causing the lack of menses I struggle with.
Completely agree – much harder to imagine without some obvious damage.
I was reacting directly to Lisa’s comment of the 70-ies plot.
Oh yeah, exactly, it can happen – it was just a common trope in bodice rippers back in ye olden times.
Not a medical expert by any means, but it seems to me any kind of injury that could cause menses to stop would be rather catastrophic, such as a perforated uterus, which would probably be debilitating or fatal at the time. Otherwise it would most likely be due to very low BMI, tumor on the pituitary, or thyroid issues, and I think ovarian cysts.
I’m with you. I can’t think of any injuries that would stop menstruation. I even Googled and it is not a thing.
And the thing is – if you Googled it, so could the author have done. But…
The “lack of menstruation” element would take me right out of the story. In addition to all the other things mentioned, a woman who is not menstruating is going to experience a host of serious issues, especially brittle bones. If I read the book, I’d keep waiting for the heroine’s hip to snap like a twig.
Is it bad that when I read “a growing problem in his trousers”, I thought of the Jingle Balls review and the Testicular Cancer Awareness Foundation?
HAH!
I love the review.
Often, reading the reviews of bad books is more fun that the reviews of good books.
stupefyingly dull, for instance!
Thx, Charlotte!
And they can be cathartic to write!
*sigh”. I remember reading this author several years back and awarding a similar grade – and I say again, shouldn’t people get better at things the more they do them?!
And is that … a wallpaper cover for a wallpaper historical?!
I am ready for cartoon-ish covers to be done. They are EVERYWHERE and tell one almost nothing about what’s in a book.