Review: My Kind of Earl

My Kind of Earl by Vivienne Lorret
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

 His mouth curved in a slow, mysterious grin. “You’re not the only one who knows things, Jane.” 

 My Kind of Earl is second in the Mating Habits of Scoundrels series where three friends are trying to write a primer on scoundrels for debutantes. Their friend Prudence was caught up in a scandal and banished to the countryside, they want to help fellow debutantes avoid such a fate. New readers could easily start here as the heroine from the first is off on her honeymoon and all you really need to know is this heroine's, Jane, motivation for why she wants to research scoundrels. The hero, Raven, first made an appearance in the Misadventures in Matchmaking series (The Rogue to Ruin). 

Catching his breath, Raven stared at her. He felt strangely mystified and exhilarated as if he were a lad seeing fireworks light up the night sky over Vauxhall for the first time. 

Raven is a gaming hell factotum who moonlights at an upper class brothel pretending to be a gentleman to bring in more upper class gentlemen, this is where he first sees Jane as she is trying to sneak in. Jane is our heroine bluestocking who has a perfect memory and wildly curious mind. She at first came off a bit annoyingly obliviously naive while Raven was trying to save her and her reputation at the brothel but as the story focused more on her and Raven, their chemistry covered up any rough edges. 

She knew he was only flirting with her out of habit, wanting to distract her. There could be no other reason. And yet, that low gravelly drawl made her wonder what, precisely, those wicked ideas were. 

I loved these two, instead of insta-lust the author wrote instant awareness and what a burning delicious tingle up the spine these two gave off. The first half is just about wholly devoted to the chemistry between the two and it definitely worked. Once the reveal of what the bird tattoo on Raven's shoulder could mean about his previously thought orphan identity, the beginning steam between the two settles into more of a comfortable heat as Jane gives Raven lessons on how to act in society and he's giving her material on how scoundrels seduce. In the second half, some of Jane's eleven brothers and sisters start to make bigger entrances into the story and we get more flushing out of her personality, how her class obsessed and ignoring parents make her feel easy to be unlovable and being a pseudo-parent to her siblings has made her want to have a plan for every contingency. The brothers and sisters also provided great moments for Raven to showed he cared for Jane by his attention to them. To enjoy Jane and Raven together so much, you will have to let go of the idea that Jane should be chaperoned and for someone who is so aware of ruination, she plays it pretty fast and loose. It wasn't until around the 60% of the story that I think the narrowed focus on Raven and Jane started to lose some steam and I wanted some outside story to come in more. 

The only way he could keep her, would be to claim his birthright. 

The outside story to our couple's romance involves a mystery Jane is determined to solve about Raven's bird tattoo and how it could be tied into his identity. It gets a bit convoluted with involvement from Jane's uncle, traitors, and vengeful French spies but still held together. Raven is obviously scared to hope because of what answers they discover could mean to him so he gets a bit resistant and growly. All this had me rating the book a strong four stars until I got to the 70% mark and a couple things happened that made me wanting to drop the rating to two stars. 

She quieted the restless sense of separation he’d felt all his life. 

I mentioned how the narrowed focus on Jane and Raven started to lose steam in the second half but what really had me dropping the rating was a couple other things. When Raven discusses his past, he reveals that he was “rescued” by an older woman when he was a teen, who he slept with, and then when he got older she introduced him to other upper class women. Raven states this: 

“By the time I’d reached my eighteenth year and my body had grown from nourishment and vigorous exercise”— he paused to wink—“ my features had lost their boyish softness. Her interest waned. 

Raven laughs and smooths anything over by saying he was a young boy in puberty, so of course he enjoyed the attentions of a woman and Jane only thinks about how she is jealous that any other woman would have had her hands on Raven's body. I can not believe that line was said without a strong stating of how that woman was a pedophile and some form of condemnation and acknowledgment of what happened was wrong. I really think if it had been a teenage girl with an older man saying this, it would have been handled differently. This small scene, in the sense of the general overall story, really soured my stomach because of the gross perpetuating of such ideals when it comes to teenage boys and sex. 

The second thing that dropped the rating was at around the 90% mark, we're in the midst of the last second angst moment before our couple eventually gets their HEA, Raven says some incredibly cruel things to Jane. I've just journey through 90% of this story with Raven and Jane learning each other and growing together to have Raven become “scared” and disregard all the work the author has done and say overly cruel things with only 10% for him to redeem himself? Needless to say, Jane forgave him too quickly and a lot of the caring previously displayed by Raven didn't hit as hard after his cruelty. Lastly, the ending was ridiculously abrupt, to the point I'm still questioning if my ARC was missing an epilogue. We get the reveal of events that led to Raven ending up at an orphanage and then boom, the ending. I don't need a five years down the road mini-novella but give me some time to not only enjoy the couple happily together but to also write a scene with them having it, I'm not sure they fully got that here. 

“And to think,” he said, “all this happened because of a button.” 

This started off so good with the delicious spine tingling teasing and chemistry between Jane and Raven only to lose some momentum in the second half and hit some major rough spots on its way to a very abrupt ending. I enjoyed Jane's open and honest admittance of love and Raven's growly but caring towards her. I also appreciated how the author must be a fan of the don't show a gun on the mantel if you're not going to use later school of thought, because when she shows a comfortable hidden chaise longue, she definitely ends up using it. The beginning of this felt so purposeful with the emotions and interactions between our couple but the ending had a very get it done and wrapped up feel. There's still two more friends out of the group to find their happily ever after and because this author can be so good with the chemistry between her leads, I still will be grabbing them up. 

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