How To Engage an Earl by Kathryn Caskie

Unexciting and basic romance

2 Stars

The last thing Laird Allen, Earl of MacLaren wants is a wife. So he’s quite surprised when he awakens in his bed chamber to find a beautiful blonde there with him, claiming to be his betrothed.

All Anne Royle wanted was to find the truth about her heritage – so she’s none too happy that she’s managed to snag herself the biggest rake of the ton. But as time, and the ruse, goes on, she finds herself wishing that their charade was real.

This is the second in a trilogy of books regarding the Royle sisters, purported to be the “secret” daughters of the Prince Regent. There were quite a lot of characters that weren’t introduced and situations that weren’t explained so I’m assuming it would be beneficial to have read the first book in the trilogy, How To Seduce a Duke, before reading this story. This story then leads on to the final book in the series, How To Propose To A Prince.

I’m sorry to say that this story just didn’t excite me or interest me at all. I read romance for the romance between the main characters and that seemed to take a back seat to solving the mystery of the triplets parentage in this particular book. There was one tepid, lacklustre love scene and little else to make me believe that Anne and Laird were really falling in love. The characters felt paper thin and could have been from any time period not to mention the fact that they weren’t particularly likeable.

I’m also really not a fan of creative names in romance novels and while it’s not the most idiotic name I’ve heard, ‘Laird’ as a first name for a supposedly Scottish Earl is still quite ridiculous. There’s also Constance Henceforth, a butler called Festidious and of course the actual ‘Royle’ sisters – which is about as subtle as a brick considering the trio are supposedly secret princesses.

The writing was fair but not very thrilling and I personally didn’t find any of the wit that was supposedly sparkling through the novel.

Perhaps if you’ve read the first book of the three then you will want to read this one however, apart from that it’s really not a book I can recommend. There are much better romance novels out there that combine some action/mystery with romance so I can unfortunately only give this story 2 stars.