Mills & Boon, £5.99, ISBN 978-0-263-93283-6
Historical Romance, 2018
It’s always a pleasant delight when an author that normally gets meh to ugh reviews on this website surprises me with a story that bowls me over with how enjoyable it is. That’s the case with Laura Martin’s An Earl to Save Her Reputation.
It isn’t amazing, as there are some pretty glaring flaws with it, but I still have had fun.
Lady Anna Fortescue, our heroine, is infamous because she’s only in her early twenties but is already a widow three times over. Her husbands all croaked within a year of marriage, so people talk as a result. Worse, she continues to run her second husband’s business, and for a blue-blooded lady, that’s just not done.
Anna would have happily avoided the ballrooms except that she has to act as a chaperone her cousin. That, right off the bat, is one issue with this story: there are many has to‘s when it comes to to Anna, and most of them feel self-inflicted, designed by the author to push the plot forward.
The main premise itself is a big has to. She encounters our hero Lord Harry Edgerton in one of these parties, and oops, she trips while he is trying to help her avoid being found in a compromising position (long story, let’s just say that it’s one of those unlucky happenstances that seem to always and only happen in romances like this kind), so now she has to agree to the façade of fake engagement with him.
The rest of the story is predictable: she and Harry bond, they get closer, and she discovers that he is as far as can possibly be from the cartoon brutes she married in the past. He’s kind, he’s adorable, and he’s happy to respect her space and boundaries.
This predictability is also the greatest virtue of this story: it allows the two main characters to explore their chemistry in a way that is fun to follow.
Anna is unexpectedly more capable and witty than the damsel in distress she comes off as in the back cover synopsis. She doesn’t let her past or the scandal of her just existing bog her down and break her, and that is actually pretty awesome.
Harry is a dream boat, meanwhile, and his appeal should be self-explanatory, heh.
So while this is a fun romance, the story itself is one big head scratch.
As you may have guessed, the main conflict here is that Anna doesn’t want to marry again. That’s understandable, as being married to Yosemite Sam, Dick Dastardly, and Snidely Whiplash can do that to a lady.
My main issue with this one is that Anna keeps asserting that she wants to maintain her autonomy and independence, but she is talking like a present day woman when she’s living in the 19th century. Her current freedom, as she calls it, is due to the stabilizing presence of men that allows her to do what she does.
For example, she’s no longer pressured to marry because she is now under the care of an uncle that genuinely cares for her well-being.
As for Harry, the author seems to have decided that he has to allowed to flex here and there, or else readers may think that he’s not a knight in shining armor and hence not “hero” enough. This means that whatever Anna is capable of doing, Harry being present makes it possible for her to do the same things better, and in some instances, much better.
In other words, what she wants is not possible, and this story demonstrates it by showing me that Anna needs either the patronage or support of a man to achieve her independence. Our heroine can never be as free as she thinks she is, had not been the presence of a supportive man in her life.
Hence, the more Anna tries to push Harry out of her life, the more author makes the heroine appear lacking in awareness and, eventually, stubbornly stupid. Wait, maybe that’s stupidly stubborn? Same difference, I guess.
My other issue is the timing of Anna’s final “I need to lose you no matter how much I love you, so that I can be free!” drama. It’s in the second last chapter of this story.
That means, after her dramatic nonsense, I only have to turn the chapter and she’s back in his arms.
This is an issue because it makes the heroine appear to be quite the flake. There isn’t enough space left in the story for Anna to embark on some convincing soul searching to come to the realization that loving Harry doesn’t mean giving up her freedom. Hence, there is no satisfying character journey for our heroine. Her running back into Harry’s arms is the final has to in her life—this time, the author has to wrap up the story ASAP, so chop, chop.
One last thing, and this is a minor one, but Anna having a business feels like a cosmetic aspect of her character.
The chemistry of the hero and the heroine reminds me a lot of those found in early-day Amanda Quick stories, and I have to say: while she overdid it sometimes, Ms Quick always had me believing it when she said in those stories that her heroines had a passion or interest. Those heroines are truly invested in their hobbies or interests, displaying expertise in and even putting time and effort pursuing these activities.
Compare them to Anna, whose business is just some superficial add-on by the author to make me view the heroine as an independent and capable woman, and my appreciation only heightens for how Ms Quick went the extra mile to make her heroines’ passions and interests believable. When she told and showed me that Emily Farringdon is a whiz when it comes to money and account books, for example, I can buy that.
Anna here, though… snort.
Anyway, yes, I’ve had a great time reading this one mostly because of the fundamental aspects of the romance. Still, the central issue keeping the heroine and the hero apart isn’t as well thought or executed, and the result makes the heroine appear far less smart than the author would have liked.
Hence, this one comes in so close to four-oogie territory, but at the same time, still so far away. Bummer.
