Barbara’s rating: 3 out of 5 Stars
Series: Here Come The Grooms #1
Publication Date: 11/26/24
Period: Regency

This author’s first entry in her new Here Come The Grooms series pits a quickly besotted Earl against a ‘having none of it’ spinster. It is a continuation of the two previous Worthing series and has appearances by those characters. Our two main characters are Miss Oriana Ognon, daughter of a Viscount, and Charles (Charlie) Carpenter, Earl of Stanwood. If you have read the preceding series, you have already met Charlie.

While Oriana doesn’t particularly dislike men, she definitely distrusts them. First her father, and now her cousin have gambled away all of the assets of the Viscountcy. If it weren’t for her maternal aunt, Oriana would be without a home or support. Thankfully, her aunt left her a lovely home and the funds to support herself and her home. That, however, doesn’t stop her wastrel cousin from gambling away the deed to her home and she is besieged by a constant stream of gamblers who show up at her door to lay claim to it. She has to prove, over and over, that the home is hers and that her cousin has no right to gamble away the title. MEN! She’ll never trust one and certainly not one who shows up after having ‘won’ the title to her home.

Charlie never gambles – except playing for pennies with his family. He always wins! So, he doesn’t doubt the outcome when he decides to play cards with Viscount Ognon after hearing he was wagering away one of his holdings – one in which his young female cousin lives. Charlie will win the title and sign it over to the young woman living in the home. Nobody should gamble away assets needed to provide a roof over the family’s head and Charlie will right this one wrong anyway.

The greeting Charlie gets when he shows up at Oriana’s door is not what he expected. She hardly gives him time to speak before booting him out the door. Well, well. Charlie has been looking for THE woman who will pique his interest. It seems he has just met her. So, now, how will he convince her that he is a good, trustworthy man and not an inveterate gambler?

I was really looking forward to seeing Charlie’s HEA, but, for me, it just fell flat. The first 40% or so of the book was pretty good and I could see the story’s potential – then, not so much. For one thing, I never felt that I got to ‘know’ Charlie or Oriana and I didn’t really feel their connection. Some of the page space that was used for deciding who was eating dinner where, which back path they were going to take from one estate to another, what they were going to have for dinner, and the myriad interactions with former series characters could have been used to further flesh out Oriana and Charlie as well as strengthen the almost non-existent plots of the villains.

I voluntarily read an early copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.