The Earl's Lady Geologist
The Earl’s Lady Geologist is the first in Alissa Baxter’s The Linfield Ladies series. It features Cassandra Linfield, an amateur geologist who writes papers under a male pen name, and Edward, Lord Rothbury, her cousin by marriage. Cassy happily spends her days digging for fossils along the beach until Edward is sent to fetch her to London for her society début. Once there, Cassy immediately dresses as a man in order to attend a meeting of the Geological Society. She and her cousin James – Edward’s half-brother – are caught by Edward as soon as the meeting is over, and Cassy promises to be on her best behavior for the rest of the season. The very next day, Cassy walks across town unchaperoned to deliver her latest geological paper to her publisher. Edward lives nearby and again catchers her. From there, the plot dissolves into little more than seemingly endless, repetitive detail about Cassy’s day to day life with a ridiculously contrived villainous plot thrown in near the end that was completely pointless and didn’t go anywhere.
As we say in the Midwest after a misstep – ‘Ope’. ‘bsolutely nothing interesting happens after the very beginning but for some reason I found myself continuing to read – and I have no idea why because I didn’t particularly like or care about any of the characters. In fact, I can’t tell you the first thing about Edward, and all I really know about Cassy is that she’s an amateur archaeologist who (of course) doesn’t want to be married – and that’s it. I have no idea what drew Cassy to Edward because he didn’t seem to have much of a personality, and even he didn’t seem to know much about Cassy and wants to marry her because she’s a good listener and he thinks she’d make a good wife. Cassy realizing she loves him came out of nowhere and I was as surprised by it as she was.
The plot is non-existent and Cassy’s being an unofficial archaeologist was more of an attempt to make her interesting rather than an actual part of who she was.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of a plot and my disinterest in any of the characters, I cannot recommend The Earl’s Lady Geologist. I will not be reading more from this series.
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Jessica Grogan
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Book Details
| Reviewer: | Jessica Grogan |
|---|---|
| Review Date: | April 4, 2021 |
| Publication Date: | 02/2021 |
| Grade: | D |
| Sensuality | Kisses |
| Book Type: | Historical Romance |
| Review Tags: | The Linfield Ladies series |
The title says geologist, the review says archaeologist, and she digs for fossils, which sounds like a palaeontologist.
Hm. Good point. I checked the book, and I suspect the archaeologist is simply a mistake (which I’ll correct) – but there she definitely spends a lot of time digging for fossils.
Yes, the archaeologist was a complete mistake on my part. ♀️
Oof, sounds like a snooze.
Did the Geology portion of the plot at least feel well-researched?
I don’t believe it went into great detail about the geology but what was there seemed plausible, at least.
If I were to just go by romance novels, I would assume that English geological and scientific societies of the past were filled with young women disguised as men. Oh, and possibly also with young women accompanying men who are presenting papers that were in fact secretly written by the young women (who cannot of course present their own papers).
I said a while ago that the heroine who DOES something has become as ubiquitous as the duke in HR, while both were actually rather rare.
Looks like she’s supposed to be a paleontologist anyway! Perhaps a self-editing mistake from the author?
All righty then! I like succinct. Succinct is good.
Thank you so much, Jessica Grogan, for walking us through this seeming cliché-ridden oeuvre. I had to go out to GR to see if anyone else found this story to be as bad as you described, and while there were readers who liked it, I also saw echoes of what you found:
Just that right there is enough for me to say “nope”. Been there, done that. (Though the cynical hero trope can be enjoyable for me when done well. But you need a good hero.)
FYI – This plot sounds a lot like Tessa Dare’s A Week to be Wicked, in which the heroine has found dinosaur prints in a seaside cave and is desperate to get to a geological society meeting in Scotland so she can present her findings and win first prize . . . whereupon she plans to give the “hero” her winnings as compensation not to marry her sister.
Yes, I thought of A Week to be Wicked too, which is on a lot of people’s all-time favourites list, I think. There were quite a few similar books around that time also………..
But from reading this review, it sounds like AWtbW is a MUCH better book!
YES!! You absolutely need a good hero and I usually adore cynical heroes. But I need to get to know them to do that. And I can handle tired cliches as long as there’s something more along with them.