How to Best a Marquess is the end of The Widow Rules trilogy, the last of the tales of the trouble Meri the Trigamist left behind when he died. I have been waiting eagerly for this book, and just like in the first two books author Janna MacGregor has shown how good she is at this romance thing. Once you start reading you can’t stop. You’ll sigh and flutter your eyelids and press your hand to your heart and wish you could step into the pages and knock some sense into these two. As always, a good plot, fascinating characters, some passion and heat, and some danger to keep it all interesting. Another great read. Wonderful as a standalone, even better if you read the entire series.

You have to love Regency England. Well, you have to love reading about it; imagining having to live in it - not so much. Father rules, daughter obeys. Where to go, what to wear, how to speak, who to marry. Father dies? No problem, brother takes over. Same rules, same restrictions. Except that maybe the brother cares even less about this young lady’s needs, wants and desires than the father did. And that, in just a couple of sentences, is Beth’s life.

Beth’s HEA was in sight when handsome, sexy, thoughtful, charming, etc., etc., etc. Julian Raleah, Marquess of Grayson, said he was going to ask her brother St. John for her hand in marriage. And that was the last time Julian spoke to her. No explanation, just a suitor no more. So when her selfish, spendthrift brother tells her marriage to Meri is her best prospect she goes along. She’s heartbroken and bitter after being abandoned by Julian, but she still retains a little hope. Until Meri spends what seems like a few short minutes with her and then is off with her dowry. When Meri suddenly dies and the story of his three widows becomes known Beth is rejected and shunned by the ton. And now she feels heartbroken, bitter and hopeless.

Grayson is a good man with a good heart, but his father lost their fortune and now Grayson is barely able to keep his marquessate going. He loved Beth and marrying her would have been the best thing in his life. But St. John turned him away, calling him a fortune hunter and threatening to ruin his family if he had further contact with Beth. And, he thinks, maybe Beth will have a better life without him, will have the things she wants and needs instead of being brought down to poverty and shame.

Beth, however, is done with shame. If the ton does not want to acknowledge her, fine, but she will not agree to another marriage demanded by her brother. She will find out what Meri did with her dowry and live independently, and she knows just who she can convince to help her, who needs funds just as much as she does: Julian.

With that plan launched the tragically parted lovers are reunited (for a business deal of course) and are off on an unchaperoned adventure, finding clues, associating with unsavory, dangerous people – and fighting to keep that spark that is still between them from bursting into a flame. But maybe some fire would be a good thing?

How to Best a Marquess is a delightful story. Beth and Julian are so obviously in love and meant to be, even if first one pulls back, then the other – it’s sweet and scorching at the same time. Julian’s faithful servant Cillian always has his back and is handy with unsolicited advice, Beth and Julian’s friends Kat and Christian and Constance and Jonathan are there for them, St. John is as evil a brother as ever was, the ton is as snooty as can be, and the Regency mores and morals make you blink at their ridiculous rigidity. Thanks to St. Martin’s Publishing Group for providing an advance copy of this book via NetGalley for my heartwarming reading pleasure and honest opinion. I loved this book and this series and recommend it without hesitation. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own. ( )

Barbara’s rating: 3.5 of 5

ROAD TRIP!!!! Second Chance Romance!!!! I have not read the first two books in this series, but I don’t feel that was a detriment to reading this one. However, it might have given me more insight into the trigamist, Lord Meriwether (Meri) Vareck, who was the brother of Christian Vareck, the Duke of Randford – the hero from the prequel, Where There’s A Will, and the first book, A Duke In Time. Maybe something from those earlier books might have made the understand why there didn’t seem to be any real animosity toward Meri.

Eight years prior to the current story, Blythe Elizabeth (Beth) Howell wants to marry Julian Raleah, future Marquess of Grayson – and he wants to marry her. That, however, does not happen and her wastrel brother persuades her to marry Meri Varek – who leaves her after only two weeks. When he dies, she discovers she isn’t legally his wife and that there are two other ‘wives’. She is, of course, ruined and shunned by the ton after that. They view her as a fallen woman, and she got absolutely nothing out of the deal. She didn’t even get her dowry back. At least the other two ‘wives’ got something out of the deal. One got a prize Hampshire pig (yep) and the other got the income from a 10-year lease on an iron ore mine, but Beth got nothing. With her brother trying to marry her off to an aging, toothless duke, Beth decides to track down all the places Meri went and find her dowry. Yep – I didn’t see the logic in that either - did she think he'd left an envelope for her at some gambling hell?

Beth is determined to find her dowry on her own, yet she cajoles Julian into helping her. Julian has now inherited the title and the marquessate is practically in dun territory. Beth knows he needs the money as badly as she does, so she proposes to split any money they find. Since Julian desperately needs the money – and he’s still desperately in love with Beth – he agrees.

Their road trip included a farmer with a very risqué statue, a ninja rooster, a highwayman, a night of gambling, a kidnapping, and many attempted steamy love scenes. Yep – it seems that each time they’d get close, they were interrupted by Julian’s strange manservant.

Overall, I enjoyed the story, but I wouldn’t read it a second time – and if I were buying a book for a friend, I’d probably choose another (book not friend). There were just too many annoying things in it – like the ploy of all of those interruptions – it got extremely tiresome. The whole push/pull between them (well mostly within Beth) also got tiresome and Beth’s reasons were just kept much too long. Believe it or not, I’m still going to round up my 3.5 stars to 4 because I did like the story – or maybe I just really wanted to like the story – I’m not sure which.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. ( )

Second chance romance

This second chance romance started out with great promise. Part of a series that’s had at it’s center three women who’d found out that they’d been all married to the same person, Lord Meriwether Vareck.
Beth (Blythe Elizabeth Howell) has promised herself to never marry again, and find out what has happened to her lost dowry.
Only her self-centered brother has decided to marry her off once more to an older lord in exchange for money, just like her first non marriage. I am at a loss to understand why Beth couldn’t find her voice to say NO!
Of course she’s a scandalous figure—even more so after she and Lord Meriwether’s two other wives/widows became friends. (Sister wives almost!)
So Beth is chasing down what’s happened to her dowry with longtime friend and foresworn would-be-husband Lord Julian Grayson. Grayson caused her heartache as a young woman. Julian is now a Marquis who requires funds to attract backers for his steam engine. He agrees to help Beth in exchange for the funds he needs when her dowry’s found.
We’re treated to them charging around the countryside with a strange Irish valet, meeting all sorts of mishaps, whilst panting after each other, with Beth still vowing never to marry again. Julian goes from broken hearted swain with a conscience, to lusty lover, to defender of the woman he’s always loved. Beth goes from a young woman determined never to give into her feelings, to a siren, and back again to uptight widow. The will I, won’t I, push and pull between the two drove me crazy.
I did like the Duke of Pelham, a strange man who looked after his sisters unlike Beth’s awful brother.
So many adventures and yet in the end all I could wish for was a quick exit.

A St. Martin’s Press ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher. ( )

I hate giving negative reviews. Let me preface this one by saying I really loved the first book in this series, I read literally hundreds of historical romances in 2021 and it made my top 5 for the year! I liked the second book better than average as well and gave it 4 stars. When I saw this one available as an ARC it was a no-brainer (this review is voluntary, etc.). I even have a soft spot for road trip and second-chance romances, and characters who are inventors! But somehow this one just fell incredibly flat for me.

I won't go on and on, but I'll explain some of my reasons because everyone cares about different qualities in a book, and the things I disliked maybe won't matter at all to others.

My biggest frustration was that both main characters seemed to be incredibly daft throughout. Over and over I'd actually have to pause reading for a moment just to cope with their simple-headedness. So many of their troubles they heaped upon themselves! I can feel sorry for slow characters and still root for them, but the heroine I actually disliked on top of it. At the very end of the book she finally admits to some of her faulty assumptions and flaws that had been getting in their way for hundreds of pages, but then the book was over, so, little good it did me. The plot seriously strained believability, and on top of that felt like all of it had been unnecessary to begin with, one 30 second conversation could have saved them literal years of heartache. (I totally get the impulse to interrupt your characters as well (in conversation or steam) when things are heating up, it draws out the tension, but that technique was used entirely too frequently in this book. After like the 6th time it was not a delicious slow burn, it was just tedious.) And to top it off, the writing felt like just a bunch of cliches strung together.

I have no idea if the muse just abandoned the author or if she was tending to an ailing parent or child or something this past year but still had to churn out a book, or if this one just wasn't at all my sort. It won't stop me from reading future books by her, but I'm glad this particular one is over. ( )