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.

After widowed Matthew's, Earl of Rosemont, wife posthumously has a letter printed in the Times about what a great husband he was, ladies have been clamoring for his attention. He decides to rent rooms in a more middle class area of London to escape for awhile. There he walks into a bookshop and feels his world tilt when he meets the owner.

Fancy Trewlove loves her family but feels pressure to marry an aristocrat because of her mother's dreams for her and all that her brothers and sister have provided her. The more she gets to know Matthew, the more she wants to simply marry for love.

Fancy can't get Mr. Matthew Sommersby out of her mind but Matthew is going to have to see beyond his trust issues.

When she was done, she licked her lips before lifting her gaze back to his, and he couldn’t help but believe he’d never been so enthralled by a person in his entire life, nor would he.

Fifth in the Sins for All Seasons series, The Earl Takes a Fancy stars the youngest Trewlove. If you've been reading the series, you'll know that Fancy is the only biological child of Ettie Trewlove. Ettie took in the other children because of the money aristocrats were willing to pay her to take care of their born on the wrong side of the blanket children. You could feasibly enter the series here as Fancy's siblings pop in and out but no real prior knowledge is needed that isn't provided in her book.

He accepted her as she was. Her past didn’t matter. With him she didn’t have to pretend or put on airs or strive to meet expectations. It was what she’d always wanted, an honesty with a gentleman. And here she had it. As his hands skimmed over her, she thought, yours, yours, yours.

Fancy was a very sweet heroine, borderline angelic. It was nice to read about a character that came from humble beginnings but an extremely loving family and never take for granted or advantage of her siblings largess they found themselves in as adults and shared with her. She was not meek or a pushover, she took a stand against what she thought her mother and family wanted for her in the end, but it was also pretty clear that they just wanted her to be happy. I would have loved more scenes with Fancy and her mother as I thought that relationship could have provided a big chunk of the heart of the story. There were some scenes with her siblings but showcasing them all together or individually more with Fancy could have added extra emotion.

He’d fallen in love with her, damn it. Felled without realizing it. Wanted her as his wife.

Matthew also had his sweet side but I felt like I knew him less. The reader learns that he was trapped into marriage by his former wife and therefore has trust issues and he has a sister that briefly makes appearances but no real friends to help show sides of his personality. I felt like some background and layers were missing from his identity makeup, he still felt pretty static as a character at the end. Matthew shone the most when he was with Fancy and they did spend a good amount of time together, bolstering the romance feel in the story. These two didn't necessarily spark and burn but they did have a gentle quietness loving.

“I love you so much that I can barely remember a time when I didn’t.”

When Fancy enters society, she becomes friends with three woman who are obvious set-ups for a series of their own and I wish they could have spent more time with Fancy to flesh them out more. I also thought the premise of Matthew being able to sneak in and out of Fancy's bookstore without getting caught by Mick a little unbelievable; the way Heath has written Mick it seems like he would have someone watching the bookstore for Fancy's protection. Except for a few secrets to be revealed and an ending distrust issue, this was overall a gentle and low angst read, I can see some readers really appreciating that right now.

This Sunday called for some indulgence, chocolate dessert and a love story.

Hope you all are having an indulgent Sunday too :)

The Earl Takes a Fancy by Lorraine Heath purchase link

Oreo Dirt Pie recipe

Not for the faint of heart, chocolate to the max!

There wasn't anything not to love here. Slow building romance, wounded souls, broken dreams rekindled, hope and the nicest characters. Then you add an excellent narrator and it's perfect. This is a classic sweet romantic tale, that would make an excellent movie.

This has to be the sweetest romance I've read. All these people are so nice and so deserving of the best love

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. 

While he was responsible for so much pain, there was a time when he’d been responsible for her most ultimate joy.

Third in the Sins for All Seasons series following the Trewlove siblings, Finn falls for an Earl's daughter. As the Trewlove siblings, except for the youngest, were all born on the wrong side of the blanket and “farmed” out (in this case, delivered by aristocrats or their servants, with a one time payment to Ettie Trewlove to take care of or dispose of baby as she saw fit), this proves dangerous for Finn and Lady Lavinia Kent, as she starts to fall for him, too.

The first half of the book had flashback scenes that went back and forth with the current events happening. These flashbacks did a pretty good job of delivering the how and why of Finn and Lavinia's relationship but as Lavinia starts off as fifteen to Finn's early twenties, some of their deeper emotional connection wasn't there for me. There was more of a feel of kid giddiness, especially from Lavinia, of doing something forbidden than actual deeper love. The misunderstanding that initially keeps them in tension is talked about and for the most part resolved in the first half. The second half is fully in the current time and we get Finn still expressing his feelings for Lavinia and Lavinia still working through the pain of their past.

“There’s no pleasure in taking what isn’t freely given.” He grinned wolfishly. “Doesn’t mean I won’t test you to see where the boundaries are.”

Finn was my favorite part of this story, he was sweet, sensitive, and conscientious. I did think that even though he was supposed to be the same age as his brothers, he felt much younger, he had more of a tender naivety feel; this could have been done to make his romance with a late teens heroine feel more natural. While I liked Finn, I struggled at times with Lavinia. She lives the very sheltered and confined life of an aristocrat daughter and after escaping some horrors her mother and father inflict on her, she decides to make it her mission to save farmed out babies. However, it felt like she blindly and naively, rich-woman-striding-in-thinks-she-knows-the-best-way-to-solve-the-problem by stepping in to buy the children and put them in nun run homes. She doesn't bother to really see if what she is doing is better for the children; Ettie Trewlove more than likely ended up being a far better situation for Finn to grow up in than being dumped at a very full nun orphanage. Lavinia never really lost her, what I think is best is, feel and her drawn out, felt a bit pointless at times, “we've changed so we can't be together” whole second half of book with Finn.

Their breathing was shallow, fraught with tension, as they each took a measure of the other.

While this started off intriguing with the from the different side of the tracks relationship, not a lot really happens, the second half felt like a bunch of forced overly melancholy we can't be together and when there were emotional moments, they felt rushed and didn't quite leave an impact. The elements for a good story were here but the spark and emotion to immerse you were not. Heath's writing is good but this felt like a going through the motions, there was some repetitiveness and I think this could have been better as a novella. There are still other Trewlove siblings to get their stories and as Heath has wrote an intriguing family, I'll still be on the lookout for future installments.