Well Read Lexi: NetGalley Review: Rules for Engaging the Earl by Janna MacGregor

Rules for Engaging the Earl by Janna MacGregor

Rating: ✩✩✩✩✩

The second book in the The Widow Rules series was a solid romance that read well as a standalone novel. This book hits all the high points for historical romances and features all the favorite tropes of “marriage of necessity/convenience,” “childhood friend to lovers” and a dash of “solving some intrigue.” The backstory allows the protagonists to shorthand the relationship and jump right into the infatuation phase all while the ongoing mystery of the bigamist first husband and the dirty army dealings perculate in the background. Characters have some real chemistry and the conflict is reasonable and believable.

That said, two major things kept this from being a great read:

I am really sick of reading romances where the whole plot is “man fails to do even the slightest bit of work on himself until a hard working and besotted woman teaches him to get it together (which reading between the lines means she just gets to do all that work for him…hooray!)” This is a personal pet peeve, but it did sour the reading experience.
I had to constantly check if I had read this book before since it is hauntingly similar to the Jess Michaels series based on the same premise. The characters and the men they marry, the friendships they form, the tropes for each pairing and even a few comparable names made it hard to see this as an original work with a new perspective to offer. I get that there are a finite number of ways to run the romantic cycle of the hero, but these resemblances definitely got in the way of my enjoyment.