Review: Everything But the Earl (The Night Fire Club #2) by Kate McMurray

    

Print Length: 252 pages

Publisher: Dragonblade Publishing (November 30, 2025)

From Goodreads.com: Not quite a marriage of convenience…

When Grace Midwood finds her betrothed kissing another, she doesn’t know what to do. Her parents want her married off this Season, but obviously that match is out of the question. But where will she find a husband?

Owen Thomas, the Earl of Caernarfon and a Welshman who spends most of his time in London, has no interest in marriage. But Grace catches his eye at a ball and before he knows it, she’s compromised and he’s proposing marriage. Not that he minds. Grace is smart, witty and very beautiful.

After a hasty marriage, he sends her to live at his estate in Wales, a place Grace is greatly looking forward to exploring. Each thinks their marriage is the perfect solution to their dilemma. Grace gets to live her life as she pleases and Owen can return to London and fulfil his duties in Parliament.

Then something strange happens—they start to miss each other. Owen and Grace keep up a steady correspondence while they are separated, and through these letters, they finally get to know each other. In fact, getting a letter from Grace soon becomes the highlight of his week. Is he falling for her after all?

But suddenly, the letters stop. And after three weeks, Owen becomes worried. But it enough to make him go to Wales to finally claim his bride?

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My Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

I just finished this novel, and to be completely honest, I’m not even sure what my thoughts are, mostly because the synopsis of the book pretty much IS the entire book. I went in expecting layers, tension, development… something. Instead, the absolute bare bones for what could’ve been an actually compelling romance had the author spent more time focusing on Grace and Owen, and not the side characters, (but I'll get to that later). 

The pacing is the first major issue for me. The story covers an entire year in just twenty-four chapters, and it moves at such a breakneck speed that I never really felt like I got to know the characters, let alone got to feel any sort of emotional connection to them. The synopsis claims that their relationship is supposed to grow through their exchanged letters, but we barely see any of these letters. The few snippets we do get are mostly about estate matters from her side and Parliamentary updates from his. Hardly the stuff of sweeping romance. For the most part the story is actually told as it is happening, and while we do switch between their alternating points of view, in my opinion, even that doesn’t help, especially when Grace is keeping not one but two secrets from Owen.

Now, one of the secrets is predictable and forgivable enough, but the second? Despite whatever reasoning she clung to, it was still pretty messed up, especially given how things ultimately unfolded and what could have happened because of her silence. So when Owen returns home and finds out the truth, I had absolutely zero sympathy for Grace. She can justify it until the cows come home, but she still denied him something that he should have been a part of from the beginning.

And then there's the side relationship between Anthony and Lark… which honestly felt completely unnecessary and more distracting than anything else. Its only real purpose was to explain why Anthony wasn’t going to marry Grace. But considering the time period? Considering the laws against such a relationship as theirs? It made the author’s choice to wedge this subplot into this book instead of simply giving those characters their own story felt both odd and out of place. Who cares what two secondary characters are going through when so much is happening between Grace and Owen off the page that needed to be seen in order to be believed?

In the end, what frustrates me most is that there was so much potential here. Potential for depth, for emotional payoff, for romantic tension. Instead, everything was rushed, underdeveloped, and ultimately left me feeling like I’d already read the story long before I actually turned the first page.

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.