Books Read: Sarah MacLean - One Good Earl Deserves a Lover

Lady Philippa Marbury is . . . odd.

The brilliant, bespectacled daughter of a double marquess cares more for books than balls, for science than the season, and for laboratories than love. She's looking forward to marrying her simple fiancé and quietly living out her days with her dogs and her scientific experiments. But before that, Pippa has two weeks to experience all the rest - fourteen days to research the exciting parts of life. It's not much time, and to do it right she needs a guide familiar with London's darker corners.

She needs . . . a scoundrel.

She needs Cross, the clever, controlled partner in London's most exclusive gaming hell, with a carefully crafted reputation for wickedness. But reputations often hide the darkest secrets, and when the unconventional Pippa boldly propositions him, seeking science without emotion, she threatens all he works to protect. He is tempted to give Pippa precisely what she wants . . . but the scoundrel is more than he seems, and it will take every ounce of willpower to resist giving the lady more than she ever imagined.

I'm definitely finding that my reading tastes are expanding as I get older and I'm starting to enjoy a wide variety of genres, particularly Regency romances, which is where this book fits in.

Lady Philippa Marbury, or Pippa as she likes to call herself, has always been the odd one out amongst her four sisters.  She's far more interested in science than fashion but with her wedding to Lord Castleton fast approaching she wants to know more about the physical aspect of what is expected of a wife.. there's only so much reading she can do.

So she sets off on a mission to find out more and she knows just the man who can help her, the handsome and charismatic Cross, business partner of her brother-in-law Bourne, whose reputation goes before him.  Cross is initially surprised to find Pippa in his club and intrigued when he hears what she's wanting to find out from him especially as he's having to fight his own attraction to her considering she's promised to another man...  

I loved the intensity of the tension and passion that builds between the two main characters Pippa and Cross, one a wide-eyed innocent in some aspects and the other a man of the world, even though not a single touch has been made between them.  I found myself wanting to read quicker so that I could reach the conclusion to see how it all panned out for them...

Although One Good Earl Deserves a Lover is the second book in the Rules of Scoundrels series by Sarah MacLean, it can be read entirely as a standalone which I've just done as hadn't read the first book, A Rogue by Any Other Name.  As I like to read all books in a series, I will definitely look to read the first book at some stage, preferably before the next book in the series, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished, is published in August.  

I'd like to thank Sarah at Piatkus for sending me a copy of this book to review.