Review: Forever Her Earl (Dukes Most Wanted #4) by Scarlett Scott

         

Print Length:  199 pages

Publisher: Happily Ever After Books, LLC (March 28, 2024)

From Goodreads.com: Bold and fiercely opinionated American heiress Lucy Chartrand has proudly left a string of scandals in her wake on both sides of the Atlantic. Her matchmaking mother may long to secure her an aristocratic English husband, but Lucy is tired of being sought after for her family’s fortune. She longs for a life of independence and freedom, far from the glittering world of London ballrooms, and she’s finally put a plan in motion to make that happen.

Gareth Claremont, Earl of Rexingham, has only accompanied his wayward younger sister to a Yorkshire country house party to keep her out of trouble. As always, mayhem finds her. This time, in the form of a new friend, the gorgeous, thoroughly improper, utterly appalling hellion Miss Lucy Chartrand. Gareth intends to do everything he can to keep the ruinous influence of a wild hoyden like Miss Chartrand far from his impressionable sister.

But Lucy’s brilliant scheme goes hopelessly awry, and now there’s one tall, handsome prig standing between her and what she wants most. He finds everything about her infuriating. She finds everything about him insufferable. They’ll never suit regardless of what happened by mistake in the moonlight.

Or will they?

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My Rating: 1 star out of 5

Good gracious! I think Gareth has to be hands down one of the worst characters that I have seen in a long time. To begin with, yes, he and Lucy have an unexpected meeting in the gardens at night while at the house party. And yes, he took certain liberties with her person. But no one had seen them, therefore there was no reason for him to demand that they marry when he said himself it was something he had done in the past that he did not care to repeat. Even Lucy was adamant about not marrying at all, yet he persisted in touching her the very next day where they were seen and she was compromised. 

Okay, now they really are forced to get married, and obviously they have an attraction to one another (if it was little more than lust at best) things should pick up right? I mean they might as well make the best out of the situation. But no. You see Gareth's first marriage was horrible. Really, really horrible. Did I mention it was horrible? I am talking it was so horrible that the author mentioned it several times in each chapter. And he can't seem to let it go even though he knows Lucy is nothing like his first wife. 

Where his first was was addicted to opium, and abhorred him and his touch, Lucy succumbs to the pleasure he can offer her at every turn (obviously that is how they ended up married after all). In fact, Lucy becomes so upset at the fact that her new husband seems to be avoiding her during the day that she hides away in his carriage demanding to go where he is going just so she has the chance to seduce him. But again, his first horrible marriage means he refuses to let himself feel anything but that lust for his wife. Or perhaps it's just this author's style to have nothing between her characters but that lust as this is not the first time I have seen such behaviors from the characters. But I digress. 

Time and again, he leaves his wife at home during the day taking himself off to his club so that he won't be around her and therefore lured into the temptation to bed her. Even though he spends his nights doing precisely that. And just when I thought we were finally going to see a redemption arc for him before the end of the story as he not only showed up for breakfast and accompanied his wife on a walk, but he also took her to the theater. Sadly, just when I thought there might be hope for him, he reverted back to his usual jerk self and was not only cold towards his wife, but also unnecessarily cruel to her, deliberately saying things that he knew would hurt her all while still lamenting to himself how hard it was to keep himself from throwing her on the bed and having his way with her. Because that's romantic right?

This is of course after his wife has realized that she is in love with him despite there being no reason for her to feel this way as again outside of the bedroom, they don't seem to spend any time together for the majority of the story. 

So she leaves him, intent on getting a divorce somehow (which would have been exceedingly hard during that time period if not altogether impossible). And that of course is enough to light a fire under him so that he tracks her down and confesses that he too has fallen in love. Which again begs the question of just when this supposedly happened. When he was having sex with her? When he was avoiding her? When he was drowning in the sorrows of how horrible his first marriage was? Again, I saw nothing between these characters that made their declarations even remotely believable. 

One time jump later and we finally get to see these two living their happily-ever-after. But honestly, as with the other books in this series, but the time we got to it, I just didn't care about these characters anymore. Gareth was a jerk who deserved to have his wife leave him, and Lucy was right when she told her mother she deserved better.