Review: Cinderella lands her earl....
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 24, 2014
This was a really nice read with a Cinderella theme. The heroine- Sophie -was a maid to the earl's sister. The earl was on his deathbed and did not want his dreaded nephew inheriting his estate, so he and his sister concoct a plan to divert the estate away from the nephew. He marries Sophie a few hours before he dies. Sophie inherits his estate as his widow and shares the bounty with her new sister in law.After the earl's death, the heroine's new sister in law- aka fairy godmother -takes upon the task of transforming her from maid to countess in a two year time period.  The heroine and her baby brother enter society as the countess and the son of the late earl.When the h makes her initial appearance with her sister in law at a dance,  the hero (another earl) notices her immediately and is attracted to her but is also very suspicious of her marriage to the late earl. He tells his best friend that he does not believe she was married to the earl or that the boy was his son. The hero was friends with the earl and had visited him a few days before his death and he did not see any evidence of a marriage or an offspring.  The H also knows that the late earl's nephew was his only heir. Armed with that knowledge, the H makes it his mission to reveal the h as a fake.There is a carriage tryst that is mentioned by other reviewers as rape, but I didn't see that incident as any more than both characters getting carried away during smex and the H not realizing she was a virgin until the deed was done. After this incident, the H knows that the boy is not her son. There are more secrets that follow after this incident, but I will not spoil them.What I really enjoyed about the book was that the usual misunderstanding (in all romance plots) was resolved early in the story and we were able to focus on the couple. You can tell that the H was devoted to the h and fell in love with her despite himself. I loved the hero. He was sensitive to the h's needs and adored her.I also loved the H's best friend who was also his wing man at parties. The bantering and bickering between the two had me chuckling throughout the book.  Romance also blooms for his wing man. I thought he merited his own book, but that does not appear to be the case since he is betrothed by the end of the story.A big recommend. Cinderella did not get her prince, but she did land an Earl! It was a library book, but would have been worth a purchase!