Book Review: My Wicked Earl

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

My Wicked Earl     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Linda Needham
Class/Genre:   Romance
Avon, Aug 2001, $5.99, 384 pp.

In 1819, Earl Charles Stirling heads up the official investigation into the recent Manchester riots. He is stunned when his agents bring in a woman claiming she is the notorious printer of seditious material, Captain Spindleshinks. Holly Finch claims Spindleshinks is her new husband. Charles keeps Holly prisoner in anticipation that Spindleshinks will try to free his wife. Charles relents and agrees to allow Holly to keep printing so she can earn a living, having her press brought to his estate. She takes advantage of his aristocratic belief that a woman cannot run a shop because she is actually the printer Spindleshinks.

Holly claims the Home Office will sweep the truth under a rug, pass new laws, and condemn the rioters when she insists a massacre occurred instead. He disagrees, saying he will learn the truth. He realizes she was there and learns her father died there. As they debate things, they fall in love, but the social differences seem too great even for a powerful emotion like love.

MY WICKED EARL is an exciting Regency romance that equally describes the times as much as the romance. The story line centers on the relationship between the honest upper class Charles and the desperate middle class Holly, but does so in an intelligent manner so that readers can fully understand the era. As she has done in other historical novels (see the medieval tale THE MAIDEN BRIDE), Linda Needham writes a plot that will appeal to fans of historical fiction as well as romance readers.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner