To Wed A Wicked Earl by Olivia Parker

[meganbmoore]

I wasn’t a huge fan of Olivia Parker’s debut novel when I read it a few months ago. I liked the characters, but disliked the plot. This is kind of the same, in that regard.

Adam Faramund is a manslut extraordinaire rake (They always are, unless they’re spies. Or both.) whose grandmother has ordered him to quit slutting it up, get married, and get an heir already, or she’ll sell the horse farm that brings the family most of its money. He’s fairly certain she’ll forget about the threat before actually doing anything about it, but would really rather not risk it. Unfortunately, he suffers from a severe case of Secretly In Love With For Years And Years regarding Charlotte Greene, whose mother thinks he’s something along the lines of The Devil Incarnate and tends to attack him with a parasol if he goes near Charlotte. Charlotte is also not-secretly in love with her neighbor and Adam’s friend, Tristan, whose sister, Rosalind, Adam pretends to be in love with so he can secretly pine for Charlotte at a closer proximity. This would be annoying is Rosalind bought it for one minute. Instead, she has so many suitors that she tends to throw things at men’s heads when they serenade her at midnight and don’t take the “go away” hint.

Tristan has also recently gotten engaged to someone else, leaving Charlotte sad and craving a bit of adventure, which she thinks Adam would be perfect for. The cover blurb makes it sound like the plot will mostly be about the fake engagement, but that doesn’t really come in until later, and most of the book is Adam Suffering Greatly as Charlotte wants to be buddies and have adventures. Unfortunately, once the fake engagement comes into play, we get to hear about how Adam doesn’t really think Charlotte is smart and thinks she’s really gullible, and we get a charming scene set up to make it look like Adam and Tristan talk about Charlotte as if she were a horse, only to have it turn out that no, they really are talking about a horse. That kind of scene is really just so endearing, don’t you think?

Mostly fun fluff, but an often irritating (mixed with fun) final third or so.