The book opens with Lavinia turning up at the hero’s room and asking him to marry her. She needs money and she needs it quickly if she’s to prevent her mother’s being carted off to Newgate and what’s the easiest way to obtain it? Yep – marry it. And as if that weren’t bad enough, she’s become addicted to laudanum to such a degree that she’s sent to a sanatorium at the beginning of the book to be weaned off the drug. She’s turned down numerous proposals of marriage, secure in the knowledge that she could afford to wait for the right one – until she discovered that her mother’s spendthrift ways and gambling habits mean they’re broke and worse, that her mother resorted to stealing valuable jewellery and selling it for cash. The story is pretty much non-existent, the characters are bland and unmemorable, the romance is flat and seriously underdeveloped and the eleventh-hour conflict is utterly ridiculous.īeautiful, vivacious and wealthy, Lavinia Gray is used to having men at her feet. I should have had the courage of my convictions and stayed away.īorn to be Wilde is nonsensical superficiality from start to finish. Maybe I’ve missed something? It’s that feeling that has made me go back to her books occasionally, so I decided I’d pick up Born to be Wilde, the third book in her Wildes of Lindow Castle series, just to see if maybe I’d got it wrong and she would wow me again. But… this is Eloisa James, right? One of the biggest names in historical romance.

There are plenty of other books out there to read, so no big loss. I’ve read some and enjoyed them – I gave Three Weeks with Lady X a DIK at All About Romance, and have rated other books highly, but after Seven Minutes in Heaven, I decided it was probably time for us to part ways. I’ve never made a secret of the fact that Eloisa James’ books have generally been rather hit or miss (mostly miss) for me. Why does the woman who’s completely wrong feel so right in his arms? Rating: D+ But the more time he spends with the beguiling Lavinia, the more he finds himself wondering… Even better, he’ll find her a prince.Īs usual, there’s no problem Parth can’t fix. Now the richest bachelor in England, Parth is not about to marry a woman as reckless and fashion-obsessed as Lavinia he’s chosen a far more suitable bride.īut when he learns of Lavinia’s desperate circumstances, he offers to find her a husband. The richest bachelor in England plays matchmaker…for an heiress he wants for himself!įor beautiful, witty Lavinia Gray, there’s only one thing worse than having to ask the appalling Parth Sterling to marry her: being turned down by him.

Eloisa james wilde books in order