The Earl I Ruined is all the gusto of fizzy champagne and New Year’s fireworks one could ever need to end the year on a high note. With her ability to tread the line between the most diverting of historical circumstances and a progressive level of sex positivity that makes me want to sing her praises from the rooftops, Peckham proves herself one of the most exciting romance authors on the rise. She walks a fine balancing act through moments of singeing desire, heart-achingly tender romance, uproariously funny turns-of-events, and desperately tragic realities of the costs of loneliness, reputation, and more. Peckham is an assured, talented writer, who somehow manages to write with a style that feels both plucked from the periodicals of the 18th century and hilariously, outrageously modern. Who wouldn’t fall in love with a heroine who makes a habit of dropping one-liners like, “Being improper is my calling,” while still possessing a host of relatable vulnerabilities and unhealed wounds that makes her both entirely relatable and dizzyingly engrossing? Apthrop is a potent match, a man whose secret past and mask of dull propriety sizzles at a slow burn in contrast to Constance’s raging firework of brilliance – a perfect combination of fire and ice with so much more under the surface. Constance is a heroine for anyone who has ever found their impetuousness, their fickle nature, or the way they wield charm and self-deprecation as a weapon used to label them “unlikable.” She’s deliciously complex, utterly engrossing, and a study in contradictions in the way the best characters always are – a fact only made better by the notion that female characters are so rarely permitted to be thus, even in the romance genre.

Peckham writes with a swirling, intoxicating combination of wit, humor, and dazzling word-play – a literary cocktail nearly as heady as the confectionary pink gowns and stunning silver tresses of her heroine.

But Constance discovers the Earl is not quite as boring as she once thought, particularly because he’s been nursing amorous feelings for her for nearly a decade. When Lady Constance Stonewell accidentally ruins the Earl of Apthorp’s reputation with a bit of mean-spirited gossip, she offers up a plot to save him – a fake engagement.

Review: Peckham continues her irresistible, wildly sex-positive The Secrets of Charlotte Street series with The Earl I Ruined.

The earl i ruined by scarlett peckham