Her Perfect Earl
Grade : B

Her Perfect Earl is a very good debut Regency Romance with strong parallels to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, complete with a plain-Jane governess, a broody - though nicer - Rochester-like widower with first wife problems, a manipulative would-be next wife Blanche Ingram-type, and a whole host of estranged Adeles/children. I'm a sucker for governess stories, and Jane Eyre is the ultimate romantic governess story.

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Esmerelda Fortune, a plain woman whose stepfather encouraged her studies, dreams dreams of opening a girls' school for serious scholarship. She plans to set up in the dilapidated house left to her by her stepfather, but to procure seed money she'll need to win the first prize given by the Classics' Society. To finish up her Compendium on Noble Greek and Roman Women, she needs access to Life of Corinna, a rare manuscript in the possession of Julian Armstrong, the Earl of Ashforth, and so accepts a position as governess to his five hellion children, in the hopes of being able to study the manuscript.

The children are so out of control that they have been through three governesses in as many months. Julian, desperate, offers Esmie a bonus of £3,000 if she can last for three months, by which time he hopes to be married and so the children will no longer his problem, but his wife's. Esmie is thrilled; this along with the prize money would get her school up and running.

Julian is a great scholar himself, and a fellow at All Souls in Oxford. He has recused himself from the judging committee for the Classics' Society, for he plans to enter his own translation of Life of Corinna. When the manuscript turns up missing, Julian and Esmie join together to search for it, in the process spending much time together, and Julian is surprised to find that he ever thought Esmie plain.

Julian is a proud man, very proper and gorgeous to boot - in a word, perfect. Esmie is smitten by his beauty and presence right from the beginning, though she knows herself to be the least perfect person around. Perfection is very important to Julian, having had the need for it beaten into him from a very young age. However, his estates are in trouble - a result of his late wife's extravagant ways - and he must marry an heiress in order to save them. The perfect candidate presents herself in the form of Miss Lambton, and, knowing his duty to his estate and title, they become engaged.

I liked the children very much, they acted like real children for the most part, something I find rare in romance novels. They are very formal with their father, calling him "the earl," and they long for a new mother, someone whom their father can love and who will love them in turn. They will know the perfect candidate when she looks at the earl as if he were "dresses and bonnets" and he looks at her as if she were "cakes and sweets." They soon realize that Miss Lambton is not that person...could it be Miss Esmie?

Julian's late wife told him that none of the five children are really his, and though he loves his children, his emotions are rarely in control when in their company, and so he has distanced himself from them. Esmie sees it as one of her jobs to bring the children and their father into a closer relationship.

There are many obstacles to Julian and Esmie's HEA, and I applaud Ms. Brooks for not taking the easy way out and suddenly gifting Esmie or Julian with a rich long, lost aunt. This wasn't a perfect book - for one thing, the constant use of the adjective "perfect" got to be wearing, and there were too many consummation interruptus scenes - but it is a strong novel, with compelling characters which pay homage to a well-loved classic novel without being overpowered by it. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Reviewed by Cheryl Sneed
Grade : B
Book Type: Regency Romance

Sensuality: Subtle

Review Date : June 29, 2005

Publication Date: 2005/07

Review Tags: governess

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Cheryl Sneed

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