Some Like it Brazen by Deborah Raleigh

Enjoyable and sweet Regency romance
3 stars

Edward Sinclair is content being a lowly gentleman farmer when he is thrust into the role of Earl of Harrington when a distant relative dies. Not comfortable with the rules and decadence of the ton, his country manners and stark masculinity soon earn him the rather demeaning title of the Peasant Earl.

The daughter of an eminent Duke, Lady Bianca Carstone is used to getting her own way and what she currently wants is to marry Lord Aldron – a more sophisticated man than she could ever hope to meet. When her father forbids the match she sets out to exact her revenge by going after a man with an even worse reputation – the Peasant Earl.

But Bianca doesn’t count on the way that Edward will make her feel and what starts off as simply a game, suddenly turns into something a lot more.


This is the first book I have read by Deborah Raleigh and I’ll admit that I debated between giving it 3 or 4 stars. In the end I settled for 3, as even though I did enjoy it, there were a few issues that I had with it that stopped me ranking it higher.

I enjoyed both the main characters in the story – both of whom were very well written. Bianca wasn’t nearly as childish as I had feared and Edward was endearing as the man who didn’t really fit with society’s stereotypes. The pair had some good chemistry and this resulted in some sexy love scenes dotted throughout the book.

The main problem for me was with the plot and the fact that there wasn’t much of one. The first half of the book was simply the pair interacting with each other and then the second half contained some necessary hurdles for the couple to overcome. Unfortunately, the conflicts were so weak and resolved so quickly that there was never any worry that the pair wouldn’t work things out.

My other complaint was that despite the whole book being 314 pages long – the story stopped at 271 pages which I thought was quite short. Not only that but it stopped quite abruptly and I found myself wanting to read more. Even just an epilogue would have been nice.

Having said all that, this was a sweet, enjoyable story that is completely harmless and uncomplicated. There are no dramatic adventures or horrific complications but instead just a plain, well-written love story. This is by no means a bad thing and if that’s what you’re looking for then you can’t go wrong with this book. 3 stars.