Review: Goodbye, Earl (Ladies' Revenge Club #3) by Ava Devlin

             

Print Length:  298 pages

Publisher:  Ava Devlin (September 23, 2025)

From Goodreads.com:  Five years ago, Claire Hightower ran away from the man she loved.

Freddy Hightower had once been her reckless a stolen groom, a whirlwind elopement, a future built on stars and scandal. But debts and dice chipped away at everything they had—until Claire fled with nothing but her unborn child and a fistful of pawnable jewels.

Now Freddy’s back.
Sober. Steadier. Still gorgeous and charming and chaotic—but also different. He’s returned to the Cotswolds for his mother’s wedding with an infuriatingly unflappable determination to win back his wife, his home, and his role as a father to the son he’s never met.

Claire isn’t handling it well.
She’s built a new life full of found family, sharp-tongued support, and exactly zero patience for handsome men with bread dough on their cuffs and cowlicks that match her son’s. But Freddy is relentless. Confident. Charming. And still so, so sexy. And he’s not the meddling heroes and heroines of books past are gathered around her table, judging gently—and helping themselves to pie.

Some love stories don’t start at the beginning.
Some start five years later, in an idyllic corner of the English countryside, unfolding alongside midnight banquets, whimsical summer games, and the second marriage of a woman who finally chose joy.

And some require a formerly estranged rake to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty, in more ways than one.

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My Rating: 3 stars out of 5 

My biggest issue with this book was one I never expected to have, and that was Claire and the way she treated Freddy for the first half of the story.

And I get it. I really do. The things Freddy originally put her through were absolutely abysmal. But that was five years ago. At first, I found myself wondering why none of her friends (or their spouses), had bothered to tell her just how much Freddy had grown and changed during their time apart. Then Claire admits that they had... she just chose not to believe them. And that honestly made her attitude even more frustrating for me. What possible reason would any of these people have to lie to her? Especially the woman Freddy had jilted in order to marry Claire. After everything they had done to help Claire escape him in the first place, why would they suddenly decide to paint him as a better man if he hadn't genuinely changed? It just didn't ring true to me.

I'm also still trying to figure out how Claire was able to have a legal document drawn up in the first book barring her husband from setting foot on his own ancestral estate. Unless I'm missing something, women couldn't legally own property during this period, so that entire plot point still doesn't make much sense to me.

Thankfully, my frustrations with Claire aside, I genuinely enjoyed the rest of the novel. It was wonderful seeing all of the couples from the previous books together again, happily married and interacting with one another. Those scenes really highlighted how far everyone has come over the course of the series.

That said, Freddy's grandmother, mother, and son absolutely stole every scene they appeared in. They brought so much warmth, humor, and personality to the story that I often found myself looking forward to their appearances even more than the romance itself.

Finally, I feel like it must be mentioned that while this book can technically be read and enjoyed as a standalone novel, I would strongly recommend starting with the first book instead. Freddy's redemption arc has been one of the strongest aspects of this series, and I think you'll appreciate just how remarkable his growth has been if you've witnessed where he started. Seeing the man he was in book one compared to the man he becomes here makes this story far more satisfying. That being said, this serious does continue on with four more books, but as much as I've enjoyed these ones I'm not sure if I will continue on as I'm not really interested in reading about what the author calls the "second generation", even if we did meet the main female character of the next book during the course of Ember's story.