The Earl's Outrageous Lover

by Elizabeth Lennox

[Cocktails and Books]

Jessica Mallory discovers, during the reading of her father's will, that she must marry by her 25th birthday or stand to lose her inheritance, which includes closing down and dismantling her father's thriving businesses. Jessica doesn't want to see the many people who rely on her father's companies to be out of work, so she caves and decides to go looking for a husband. Of course, looking for a husband means flitting around Europe trying to find the right man and falling short, leaving her just 2 weeks to find said husband under the stern eye of Lord Edward Livingston.

This was a story that had potential if it was given more time to grow and for the two main characters, who truly rubbed each other the wrong way despite their attraction, were given the room to get to know each other. Then there is the element that they had first met when Jessica was five and her family attended the funeral of Edward's mother. There seemed to be some history between the two, that could have changed the tone of the story and made the characters more endearing (Jessica finds a dried rose petal from the rose she had given Edward at the funeral). And finally, after going to such lengths to save her father's companies, they are never spoke of in all the conversations between Edward and Jessica. I would have thought the state of the companies and their future would have been something the two discussed, but none of that is ever mentioned, which leads to be wonder how important they really were.

After finishing this book, I was left wanting so much more and wishing the author had given the story a few 100 or so more pages for the romance between Edward and Jessica to bloom into something much more realistic.