Reviews for Earl to Enchant: The Rogues' Dynasty

The average rating for Earl to Enchant: The Rogues' Dynasty based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-01-24 00:00:00 Derek Heald When Lady Arianna Sweet arrives unannounced at Lord Morgandale's country estate he mistakes her for a courtisan he hired for the weekend. Arianna soon disabuses Morgandale of that notion and informs him she is in need of his grandmother, Lady Elder. Morgandale informs her that his grandmother has since passed away, but invites her to stay at his estate for awhile to recover from her trip, In fact demands it and sends away her carriage and driver so she can't leave. Arianna Sweet has recently returned to England after spending most of her life in India with her father. Her father has been murdered and a potentially life altering formula he was working on stolen. Arianna knows who murdered her father and stole the secret...now she races to find the villain and retrieve the secret. The attraction between Morgandale and Arianna is instantaneous. But Morgandale doesn't want to be attracted to Arianna and does his best to fight it. However, Arianna is innocent to the ways of love but wants to see where this attraction between them will led. And being ignorant of the social decorum in England, she does some shocking things that leave Morgandale dazed and confused. She leaves for London after resting at his estate and Morgandale soon follows as he is now in love with her but will not admit it; even to himself. I really wish I could say I liked An Earl to Enchant. It has all the qualities of a good historical romance, but I feel that Ms. Grey followed a template when writing this book. Having read neither of her other two, I'm not sure if this is her style of writing or it's just this book. I really didn't feel a connection between the hero and heroine. There was an awkwardness to their story like two pieces of a puzzle that don't quite fit. The book is 352 pages long and 275 of those pages dealt with them on his country estate. A long and frankly boring tributary to their blossoming love. The time span was one week but it felt like one year. Once they do consummate their love it was quick and fast. About one page. Even Morgandale apologizes for being so quick off the mark. I had to keep flipping back through the book because scenes would suddenly appear, written as though I should know what was going on. Insignificant tidbits and conversations would pop up randomly leaving me feeling confused. And eventually irritated. Ms Grey has a habit of building up a scene, giving the impression of being important. Then disappoints by resolving in a single sentence or two. The two most interesting aspects of the book are Morgandale's letters from his grandmother who quotes a man who had a saying for everything and Morgandale's father Gibby. Unfortunately you don't get to see much of them. The "intriguing" plot was elaborated on and resolved in about two to three pages. The scenes that made up the suspense portion of the plot didn't make sense. For example, the villain sees Arianna's maid in London but leaves London to go to Morgandale's estate to find out where Arianna is. Huh? Once Morgandale finds out the big secret he tells her he will fix it all. But she figures it out RIGHT after he leaves, goes to the villain's home, solves the crime, and all is well. Morgandale doesn't even get to be the hero. But Ms Grey allows him to figure out the formula's secret so he doesn't look like a completely inept.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-07-25 00:00:00 Michael J Looft I had a difficult time with this book. One moment I was enjoying the heck out of it and the next I was wrinkling my brow, wondering what in the world happened when it seemed to fall apart. Then it would pick right back up and sail along quite smoothly for a bit, only to sink back down to previous depths. I'm going to say it. It was an up and down read. The conclusions I have come to in my dilemma with this story is, first of all, the dialogue is what threw me most of the time. Sometimes there's wittiness enough to get through a scene, but then the next scene has Morgan and Arianna sounding like 12-year-olds. I never did figure out if it's the wording used, the cadence of those words, or just what caused the problem. All I know is I didn't care for most of the dialogue throughout. The book actually starts out quite nicely. Morgan has retired to the country to escape his newly married cousins and their respective bliss. He's just had enough and wants a little debauchery to counteract all that marriage stuff. So he hires a courtesan for the week, anticipating a lot of satisfaction. What he gets instead is Arianna Sweet sweeping into his life during the same storm his lady of the night is expected. Yep, he mistakes her for a wanton woman. This scene is also the first instance of the dialogue I talked about before. Arianna has come straight from India where her father was murdered and she's determined to finish his work so he'll receive due recognition posthumously. She is a savvy young woman due to her international experience, but there are spots where that savviness inexplicably disappears for a while. One of those aforementioned down moments is Morgan began to irritate me with his never marrying attitude. It's all well and good for him to not want to marry, but even after he begins to think there's more to his relationship with Arianna, he still refuses to give in. This just went on much too long, more than three-quarters of the book. I want something different to go on after a while when I read, and it just didn't happen here. At least Arriana's single-minded focus on her father's work doesn't last nearly as long as Morgan's non-marriage hang-up; she's admitted she's fallen for the man before she leaves his home when he doesn't commit in any way to her. An up side is that I do like the love scenes (minus the dialogue) between these characters. There's sexual tension aplenty starting first on Morgan's part and then Arianna's as she becomes more and more aware of him as a man in conjunction with her sensuality. I have not read the second book in this series. I'm on the fence about it. I did enjoy the first book a little more than this third one, so I'm not sure I want to pick up the middle part of the series right now or not. Maybe some day. See my complete review at