BOOK REVIEW: How to Train Your Earl by Amelia Grey

 I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

How to Train Your Earl by Amelia Grey is the third book in her First Comes Love series. I enjoyed book one, The Earl Next Door, so I was happy to dive back into this world.

Brina Feld is a young widow. She lost her husband of three months when the ship he’d been sailing on went down. His heroism (he died saving a multitude of others) inspires her to devote her own life to service. Together with two friends, heroines in the other novels, she has founded a school for the sisters and daughters of sailors lost in the same shipwreck. She has spent five decorous years honoring her husband’s memory. She’s content and fulfilled, or so she tells herself and others.

Zane Browning, Earl of Blacknight, is a very reluctant earl. Until recently very far down in the line of succession, Zane had no qualms about devoting his life to gambling and womanizing. The accidental death of the previous earl and the next couple of young men who should have succeeded to the title, has left him loaded down with responsibilities he does not want, the chief of which is to marry and produce an heir.

Zane has crossed Brina’s path once before, under circumstances Brina would like to forget. When he sees her again, he makes up his mind at once. It is Brina or no one. However, while she certainly finds him attractive, in a way she never expected to be attracted again, she has no interest in changing her lifestyle.

Zane’s plot to change her mind, placing a bet that she will agree to be his wife by the end of the London Season, has the whole of the ton agog. Bets are placed for and against. Infuriated and embarrassed, Brina counters with a bet of her own. She will not marry him. Rather he will apologize to her before the world. In this somewhat ill-conceived way, he convinces her that he is in desperate need of reformation and needs her help. She agrees to help him learn the correct way an earl should behave.

Fans of historical romance can see how this will play out. Happily, it plays out in a lovely, fun-to-read fashion. This is a delightful series. Having missed book two, I’ll have to go back and see how the second heroine fared.