Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥
Humor: A bit
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and the heroine

Should I read in order?
It’s not totally necessary. You’ll get a touch of character depth for the heroine, Eliza, in book 1 but nothing extensive.

Basic plot:
Nathaniel, her late husband’s friend, asks Eliza’s help in launching a young widow close to him into society.

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency time period (1812)
- London setting
- Best friends spouse
- Child in the story – a side character has a young son that pops in and out of page time
- A touch of instalust here
- Widow heroine (didn’t have a good marriage)
- Former soldier (Earl) hero
- Working women – heroine owns a business with her sisters called Elegant Occasions
- Medium steam – it’s a 2 steam but the page count felt shorter in this one?

Ages:
- Hero is 30, heroine is 27

My thoughts:
I have read a lot of Sabrina Jeffries (This is my 21st novel by her!) and I generally do really like her. But, I find that a lot of her heroines and heroes just feel the same. Especially her heroes. And even though it’s been awhile since I have read her, I thought this one was kind of par for a lot of her other books and nothing really stood out to me or grabbed me.

I’m not a huge fan of secret keeping, or instalust really (it makes the books lower on tension and feels for me usually) so I think if those things are your jam you will enjoy this one quite a bit more than me. As it was, it was a pleasant read, but I don’t see myself returning to this novel. I liked the first book in the series quite a bit more than this one.

I also saw something about the title being changed and it was going to be An Earl for Eliza? Or something like that? I’m kind of sad about the title change. I think it works better (yay alliteration) and matches with the title from book 1. But those are just random thoughts!

I think there was quite a bit of side characters at play here with Nathaniel’s widow he’s trying to sponsor and the baggage from the past, I think the couple and their romance just got a bit lost for me here.

Content warnings:

- Brief mention of death of hero’s mother the past autumn and mention of other side character deaths (one in childbirth)
- Some scenes of violence remembered from war
- Heroine didn’t have the best marriage (her husband lied to her and kept things from her, and said things to her like her breasts were vulgar)
- Toxic family members – she has a run in with her father who disowned her years ago
- Infidelity (view spoiler)

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

Pg 36 – kiss but it’s done to see if someone else actually has feelings for him (he doesn’t have feelings for her, she’s more of a sister to him)
Pg 39 – another kiss
Pg 64 – kiss
Pg 103 – 🔥 kisses, her on top in a carriage
Pg 155 – 🔥 kisses, oral for her, missionary
Total pages: 218