christinel 's review for:

The Earl of London by Louise Bay

3.0

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A solid entry from Louise Bay, whose smart characters and interesting settings continue to satisfy. This one concerns an Englishwoman living in the countryside and trying to run her family's estate in keeping with tradition, and a new neighbour who at first seems very nouveau rich with his helicopter and ideas about development but turns out to have old ties to the area too. Although I get a lot of pleasure from these books, I did have some moments of hesitation or discomfort during this one. The hero was a little more alpha than I wanted him to be. I didn't mind that he had a lot of sex before meeting the heroine but I did mind that he didn't really treat the women he had sex with as individual people. I am also starting to feel a little guilty about the glorification of wealth and privilege in these books, and felt it especially here with the emphasis on inherited money. I actually wanted the book to go deeper into some of the interesting conflicts that came up early on: what is the right balance between bringing new money into a community and preserving tradition? What does it mean if a man insists you give up all control in the bedroom and you kind of like it (I don't think I would, by the way)? And what do privileged people owe their community? Having said that, I can't deny that I deeply enjoy the vicarious thrill ride of falling in love alongside these characters.