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A review by rjordan19
Bed Me, Earl by Felicity Niven
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥+
Humor: Yes
Perspective: Third person from both hero and heroine (but I’d say more so from the hero)
When mains are first on page together: Very soon in (6% but only about 5 pages into the actual story)
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes. The first epilogue is a few months after. There is also a second epilogue 18 years in the future available as a newsletter sign up.
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy from the author in e-book form
Should I read in order?
It’s not totally necessary but there is definitely mention of other characters in the Bed Me series. Also it’s interesting seeing George from book 2 (Bed Me, Baron) during the middle of his story from Phineas’ eyes.
Basic plot:
Caro feels life has passed her by – as a quiet spinster she takes advantage of her brother’s friends attending a house party to have a night of passion.
Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1819)
- London and country settings
- tall heroine/short hero (...or at least ‘average height’ ;))
- friends sister
- bespectacled hero with silver in his hair
- heroine has a stutter and lisp
- soldier hero – he was in the Navy when he was younger
- beloved pets – heroine has a bloodhound named Lavinia that is the best service dog
- hero falls first
- higher steam – 7 scenes (a couple may be on the short side)
Ages:
- Heroine is 29, hero is 35
First lines:
Mmmmm. Phineas Edge, the Earl of Burchester, was content. More than content, he was wholly gratified. If he were a cat, he would purr.
My thoughts:
What a first meeting! I was immediately in love with this book. Immediately! It’s has been awhile since I’ve been sucked in so completely within the first chapter.
These characters were so real, raw, and had such depth – I know I will be thinking of them long after I finish this review. Phin is SUCH a unique hero. I’ve never read anyone like him. And I just adored him. Utterly charming, adorable, fun, you cannot help but love him. But also a bit arrogant in an unassuming way, maybe a touch self centered, a bit flighty – gosh I just really adored him and all his faults. I never knew how much I needed a chatterbox hero. I would have always said NO. I love my strong, silent type. Wordless dark looks. But...but….I actually needed THIS so, so badly. The way he talks through all the situations, especially the bedroom, is appreciated. He wants her. He fantasizes about her for months. He eagerly awaits her arrival in London months away. With another kiss he decides he must marry her. There is no other conclusion to this – he needs those kisses every morning of his life. He begins thinking of her as his future wife in his head and IT’S SO FUCKING CUTE I SWEAR TO GOD...The fact that this man is on his knees promising to let her come if she just agrees to marry him? Utterly melted.
Caro is..probably my favorite heroine of Niven’s so far. I just melted for her. My heart fucking broke for her worries, her desire for a friend. It takes some time to get to know Caro – and I think she’s getting to know herself as well over the course of this book. She has been basically a prisoner in her home for so many years, she has to explore her new found freedom and gain confidence.
How did Niven take a story that had a bang right at the beginning and immediately build up that longing and tension that I crave so badly in romance? Usually for me it’s broken after the first sex scene or at least dampened quite a bit more I don’t feel much tension at all. But in this one the longing somehow got stronger and stronger as they went on. Every scene got more and more emotional until I was so wrapped up in these two.
Most random thoughts but thank you for acknowledging that he blew it all over his sheets in his guest room at the country house and also on the book store floor and the resolution to that lol. I STILL think about one book (another author) where the hero masturbates on a couch at a house party and there was no mention of the semen. Where IS IT? Those poor servants..
I am just adoring the way this series is coming out. Can’t wait for more!
Endearments
The hero calls the heroine ‘darling’ and ‘sweetness’
Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:Any mistakes/typos are my own
How very sweet. Such sweet little kisses. He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips. She stopped kissing him, but kept her mouth on his. So he did it again. She pulled her head back and looked at him.
“Open up for Phin, there’s a good little darling.”
---
“You like that, darling?”
She gazed at him with her green eyes and nodded.
“Wait until you feel my mouth.”
---
He knew who she was now, but he still didn’t know what she was. And she must make sure he never did. She wanted to stay his lovely girl. Not deformed, not slow-witted, not evil, not cursed. She didn’t know why she cared since she would never see him again. But she wanted to be lovely for him. And for herself.
---
“She is shy, you know.”
Again. The shyness. It was an abominable falsehood.
“But how is she to meet gentlemen when she is cloistered like a nun on your father’s estate? Doesn’t she need Seasons like every other young lady? To show herself off?”
And to make herself available to Phineas again. He didn’t want to wait another decade for an invitation to come to Sudbury Manor so he could be seduced by the quiet Amazon. He wanted to seduce her himself, at his leisure, in his own bed, with no brother or father nearby.
---
“Good news for you. There are no gaming hells in Burchester.”
“Yes. Good news,” William said weakly.
“And we’ll find something else to do in the evenings besides cards. We’ll talk.”
“Do you ever do anything else, Phin?”
---
A little kiss. Not too short, not too long. He did not suck at her tongue as he longed to do. He kept his own tongue in his mouth.
He came away from her lips just a bit, and pressed his forehead to hers. Yes, she was trembling. Her breath was ragged.
“Maybe one more little one, darling?”
She nodded, her head going up and down only a fraction of an inch. Yes.
And this time, her lips parted slightly and he could feel the heat of her mouth. Oh, his cock was so stiff now with just two kisses. But he had said a little one and he kept his word. And it was just as delicious as the first little one. But now he was greedy.
“And darling, maybe, a bit bigger one?”
She nodded and parted her lips and he held her chin between his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger and kissed her deeply, softly, his tongue tasting her gently, swirling over her tongue.
---
She was incredible. Incredibly beautiful. Unbelievably arousing.
And she didn’t want him to be good. Could anything be more idea? Because Phineas Edge was very good at being bad.
---
He had both her wrists pinned to the wall on either side of her and he was pressing into her.
He whispered, “Phin has to make sure this is what you meant, darling. When you said you didn’t want me to be good? Is it?”
---
That could never happen again.
She had to end this.
But she had found no way to resist his touch, his words. If Phineas crept up behind her right now and whispered lovely girl in her ear, she wouldn’t put it past herself to lift her skirts and offer herself to him like a harlot.
And, in fact, wasn’t that what she had just done?
So. Fucking. Cute.
After he had read the letter five times, he folded it carefully and put it in the cedar box which held a silk nightdress trimmed in Brussels lace.
---
Instead, she gasped.
The rage on her face melted and he saw the same look in her eyes he had seen when he had first nuzzled her tidbit with his cock in Sudbury. What was that look? Some kind of wonderment, he supposed. Perhaps a thrill? He could only hope.
//
What had made her melt? She reached out with her free hand and he was so prepared for a slap that he flinched. Her hand went to his face and touched his spectacles.
Damn it. He had forgotten he still had the spectacles on, pushed down to the end of his nose, and he had been looking at her over them this whole time, quite like some harassed and underpaid clerk.
He reached up to take them off, but she pushed his hand roughly away and stepped toward him, her eyes on his.
“You...w-wear thpectacleth,” she choked out.
Her pink tongue flashed to the front of her mouth, behind her teeth, as she said spectacles. His cock turned to iron in his breeches.
---
This was freaking adorable to me.
“We could still be friends.” Frendth.
There was a long silence.
“Well,” Phineas said. He continued to walk at the same pace. He reached out with his free arm and snapped off a twig from a shrub next to the gravel path. “I think you’re a very intelligent woman. Far more intelligent than I am. I deeply respect your thinking. And what you say. And I want you to say more things to me. A great deal more. I want to hear everything you think. So it is with great regret that I, as your friend, have to tell you what you just said is a cartload of rubbish. Complete and utter rubbish.”
He crushed the twig in his hand, threw it away, and stopped walking and turned to her, taking both of her gloved hands in his. “I know a great deal about what will make me happy, Caro. My own happiness is really the only thing I’m expert in. And I have arrive at the conclusion that the thing that will make me the most happy is you. And making you happy.”
---
“Spectacles.” Thpectacleth. She pushed his waistcoat over his shoulders.
“For you, darling.”
And then she couldn’t believe herself, she was clawing at him, moaning into his mouth just as she had in the library when she had first seen him in his spectacles.
---
MISS NIVEN. YOU ARE BREAKING MY HEART.
He had known. He had known she didn’t want to put her tongue on his cock.
“You can tell me anything. I want you to tell me everything.”
She couldn’t tell him everything. She had been silent for too many years. She had too much locked up inside of her.
But she could kiss him.
---
“Ungh. Phineas.”
“Yes?”
“T-t-talk to me.”
“About how you’re such a good girl and you’re going to come for Phin again?”
Oh, my God.
---
My freaking heart
She would seduce him the way he seduced her.
“Caro w-w-wants her Phin.” She released her grip on his back and trailed her hands up and down his flanks. “Caro needs Phin.”’
---
He didn’t think. There was no time to think. And thinking was not what he did best.
---
One of my favorite things – when the hero keeps little trinkets from the heroine
It was a box of her. Her husband had a secret box of her, tucked away in his closet.
Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.
- emotionally abusive father regarding heroine’s speech challenges
- remembrance of mother falling down the stairs and dying (heroine) when she was 17
- alcoholism (heroine’s mother)
- death of father (heroine) from illness
- mention of side character’s gambling addiction
- hero’s ex-mistress spits in his face, slaps him and blackmails him
- heroine is bullied by hero’s ex-mistress
- scene of threatening with a knife
- knife violence on page (attempted suicide)
Locations of kisses/intimate scenes: These include some quotes that might be repeated from above
Safe sex: Hero pulls out
6% - 🔥 kisses, breast play, cock touches, fingering for her, missionary (V loss for her) in the bed at a country house party
How very sweet. Such sweet little kisses. He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips. She stopped kissing him, but kept her mouth on his. So he did it again. She pulled her head back and looked at him.
“Open up for Phin, there’s a good little darling.”
14% - kiss
28% - kisses, cock touches
32% - 🔥 - standing up fuck inside the third floor of the bookstore
She experienced two seconds of panic as she was backed into a wall by a sturdy force until she heard “Darling, you did say you didn’t want me to be good,” and she started to throb from his voice alone.
41% - kiss
47% - 🔥 kisses that lead to oral for her on the couch in the drawing room/sitting room
“That’s right, darling. Don’t worry about a thing. Just let Phin be close to you. It makes him feel so good to touch you. Even this way. With all our clothes on. Standing up. In your brother’s drawing room.”
54% - kiss
57% - 🔥 kisses, missionary followed by another missionary scene and then fingering for her
“Ungh. Phineas.”
“Yes?”
“T-t-talk to me.”
“About how you’re such a good girl and you’re going to come for Phin again?”
Oh, my God.
65% - kiss
66% - 🔥missionary scene that is pretty short
She would seduce him the way he seduced her.
“Caro w-w-wants her Phin.” She released her grip on his back and trailed her hands up and down his flanks. “Caro needs Phin.”’
71% - kiss
72% - start of a blow job that is ended
85% - 🔥her on top
“Yes, that’s right, ride me, Caro. As rough as you want. You won’t hurt me.”
92% - 🔥blow job
”Oh, God, yes. You can do whatever you want to me.”
Readability: 📖📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥+
Humor: Yes
Perspective: Third person from both hero and heroine (but I’d say more so from the hero)
When mains are first on page together: Very soon in (6% but only about 5 pages into the actual story)
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes. The first epilogue is a few months after. There is also a second epilogue 18 years in the future available as a newsletter sign up.
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy from the author in e-book form
Should I read in order?
It’s not totally necessary but there is definitely mention of other characters in the Bed Me series. Also it’s interesting seeing George from book 2 (Bed Me, Baron) during the middle of his story from Phineas’ eyes.
Basic plot:
Caro feels life has passed her by – as a quiet spinster she takes advantage of her brother’s friends attending a house party to have a night of passion.
Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1819)
- London and country settings
- tall heroine/short hero (...or at least ‘average height’ ;))
- friends sister
- bespectacled hero with silver in his hair
- heroine has a stutter and lisp
- soldier hero – he was in the Navy when he was younger
- beloved pets – heroine has a bloodhound named Lavinia that is the best service dog
- hero falls first
- higher steam – 7 scenes (a couple may be on the short side)
Ages:
- Heroine is 29, hero is 35
First lines:
Mmmmm. Phineas Edge, the Earl of Burchester, was content. More than content, he was wholly gratified. If he were a cat, he would purr.
My thoughts:
What a first meeting! I was immediately in love with this book. Immediately! It’s has been awhile since I’ve been sucked in so completely within the first chapter.
These characters were so real, raw, and had such depth – I know I will be thinking of them long after I finish this review. Phin is SUCH a unique hero. I’ve never read anyone like him. And I just adored him. Utterly charming, adorable, fun, you cannot help but love him. But also a bit arrogant in an unassuming way, maybe a touch self centered, a bit flighty – gosh I just really adored him and all his faults. I never knew how much I needed a chatterbox hero. I would have always said NO. I love my strong, silent type. Wordless dark looks. But...but….I actually needed THIS so, so badly. The way he talks through all the situations, especially the bedroom, is appreciated. He wants her. He fantasizes about her for months. He eagerly awaits her arrival in London months away. With another kiss he decides he must marry her. There is no other conclusion to this – he needs those kisses every morning of his life. He begins thinking of her as his future wife in his head and IT’S SO FUCKING CUTE I SWEAR TO GOD...The fact that this man is on his knees promising to let her come if she just agrees to marry him? Utterly melted.
Caro is..probably my favorite heroine of Niven’s so far. I just melted for her. My heart fucking broke for her worries, her desire for a friend. It takes some time to get to know Caro – and I think she’s getting to know herself as well over the course of this book. She has been basically a prisoner in her home for so many years, she has to explore her new found freedom and gain confidence.
How did Niven take a story that had a bang right at the beginning and immediately build up that longing and tension that I crave so badly in romance? Usually for me it’s broken after the first sex scene or at least dampened quite a bit more I don’t feel much tension at all. But in this one the longing somehow got stronger and stronger as they went on. Every scene got more and more emotional until I was so wrapped up in these two.
Most random thoughts but thank you for acknowledging that
I am just adoring the way this series is coming out. Can’t wait for more!
Endearments
Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:Any mistakes/typos are my own
How very sweet. Such sweet little kisses. He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips. She stopped kissing him, but kept her mouth on his. So he did it again. She pulled her head back and looked at him.
“Open up for Phin, there’s a good little darling.”
---
“You like that, darling?”
She gazed at him with her green eyes and nodded.
“Wait until you feel my mouth.”
---
He knew who she was now, but he still didn’t know what she was. And she must make sure he never did. She wanted to stay his lovely girl. Not deformed, not slow-witted, not evil, not cursed. She didn’t know why she cared since she would never see him again. But she wanted to be lovely for him. And for herself.
---
“She is shy, you know.”
Again. The shyness. It was an abominable falsehood.
“But how is she to meet gentlemen when she is cloistered like a nun on your father’s estate? Doesn’t she need Seasons like every other young lady? To show herself off?”
And to make herself available to Phineas again. He didn’t want to wait another decade for an invitation to come to Sudbury Manor so he could be seduced by the quiet Amazon. He wanted to seduce her himself, at his leisure, in his own bed, with no brother or father nearby.
---
“Good news for you. There are no gaming hells in Burchester.”
“Yes. Good news,” William said weakly.
“And we’ll find something else to do in the evenings besides cards. We’ll talk.”
“Do you ever do anything else, Phin?”
---
A little kiss. Not too short, not too long. He did not suck at her tongue as he longed to do. He kept his own tongue in his mouth.
He came away from her lips just a bit, and pressed his forehead to hers. Yes, she was trembling. Her breath was ragged.
“Maybe one more little one, darling?”
She nodded, her head going up and down only a fraction of an inch. Yes.
And this time, her lips parted slightly and he could feel the heat of her mouth. Oh, his cock was so stiff now with just two kisses. But he had said a little one and he kept his word. And it was just as delicious as the first little one. But now he was greedy.
“And darling, maybe, a bit bigger one?”
She nodded and parted her lips and he held her chin between his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger and kissed her deeply, softly, his tongue tasting her gently, swirling over her tongue.
---
She was incredible. Incredibly beautiful. Unbelievably arousing.
And she didn’t want him to be good. Could anything be more idea? Because Phineas Edge was very good at being bad.
---
He had both her wrists pinned to the wall on either side of her and he was pressing into her.
He whispered, “Phin has to make sure this is what you meant, darling. When you said you didn’t want me to be good? Is it?”
---
That could never happen again.
She had to end this.
But she had found no way to resist his touch, his words. If Phineas crept up behind her right now and whispered lovely girl in her ear, she wouldn’t put it past herself to lift her skirts and offer herself to him like a harlot.
And, in fact, wasn’t that what she had just done?
So. Fucking. Cute.
After he had read the letter five times, he folded it carefully and put it in the cedar box which held a silk nightdress trimmed in Brussels lace.
---
Instead, she gasped.
The rage on her face melted and he saw the same look in her eyes he had seen when he had first nuzzled her tidbit with his cock in Sudbury. What was that look? Some kind of wonderment, he supposed. Perhaps a thrill? He could only hope.
//
What had made her melt? She reached out with her free hand and he was so prepared for a slap that he flinched. Her hand went to his face and touched his spectacles.
Damn it. He had forgotten he still had the spectacles on, pushed down to the end of his nose, and he had been looking at her over them this whole time, quite like some harassed and underpaid clerk.
He reached up to take them off, but she pushed his hand roughly away and stepped toward him, her eyes on his.
“You...w-wear thpectacleth,” she choked out.
Her pink tongue flashed to the front of her mouth, behind her teeth, as she said spectacles. His cock turned to iron in his breeches.
---
This was freaking adorable to me.
“We could still be friends.” Frendth.
There was a long silence.
“Well,” Phineas said. He continued to walk at the same pace. He reached out with his free arm and snapped off a twig from a shrub next to the gravel path. “I think you’re a very intelligent woman. Far more intelligent than I am. I deeply respect your thinking. And what you say. And I want you to say more things to me. A great deal more. I want to hear everything you think. So it is with great regret that I, as your friend, have to tell you what you just said is a cartload of rubbish. Complete and utter rubbish.”
He crushed the twig in his hand, threw it away, and stopped walking and turned to her, taking both of her gloved hands in his. “I know a great deal about what will make me happy, Caro. My own happiness is really the only thing I’m expert in. And I have arrive at the conclusion that the thing that will make me the most happy is you. And making you happy.”
---
“Spectacles.” Thpectacleth. She pushed his waistcoat over his shoulders.
“For you, darling.”
And then she couldn’t believe herself, she was clawing at him, moaning into his mouth just as she had in the library when she had first seen him in his spectacles.
---
MISS NIVEN. YOU ARE BREAKING MY HEART.
He had known. He had known she didn’t want to put her tongue on his cock.
“You can tell me anything. I want you to tell me everything.”
She couldn’t tell him everything. She had been silent for too many years. She had too much locked up inside of her.
But she could kiss him.
---
“Ungh. Phineas.”
“Yes?”
“T-t-talk to me.”
“About how you’re such a good girl and you’re going to come for Phin again?”
Oh, my God.
---
My freaking heart
She would seduce him the way he seduced her.
“Caro w-w-wants her Phin.” She released her grip on his back and trailed her hands up and down his flanks. “Caro needs Phin.”’
---
He didn’t think. There was no time to think. And thinking was not what he did best.
---
One of my favorite things – when the hero keeps little trinkets from the heroine
It was a box of her. Her husband had a secret box of her, tucked away in his closet.
Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.
- emotionally abusive father regarding heroine’s speech challenges
- remembrance of mother falling down the stairs and dying (heroine) when she was 17
- alcoholism (heroine’s mother)
- death of father (heroine) from illness
- mention of side character’s gambling addiction
- hero’s ex-mistress spits in his face, slaps him and blackmails him
- heroine is bullied by hero’s ex-mistress
- scene of threatening with a knife
- knife violence on page (attempted suicide)
Locations of kisses/intimate scenes: These include some quotes that might be repeated from above
Safe sex:
6% - 🔥 kisses, breast play, cock touches, fingering for her, missionary (V loss for her) in the bed at a country house party
How very sweet. Such sweet little kisses. He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips. She stopped kissing him, but kept her mouth on his. So he did it again. She pulled her head back and looked at him.
“Open up for Phin, there’s a good little darling.”
14% - kiss
28% - kisses, cock touches
32% - 🔥 - standing up fuck inside the third floor of the bookstore
She experienced two seconds of panic as she was backed into a wall by a sturdy force until she heard “Darling, you did say you didn’t want me to be good,” and she started to throb from his voice alone.
41% - kiss
47% - 🔥 kisses that lead to oral for her on the couch in the drawing room/sitting room
“That’s right, darling. Don’t worry about a thing. Just let Phin be close to you. It makes him feel so good to touch you. Even this way. With all our clothes on. Standing up. In your brother’s drawing room.”
54% - kiss
57% - 🔥 kisses, missionary followed by another missionary scene and then fingering for her
“Ungh. Phineas.”
“Yes?”
“T-t-talk to me.”
“About how you’re such a good girl and you’re going to come for Phin again?”
Oh, my God.
65% - kiss
66% - 🔥missionary scene that is pretty short
She would seduce him the way he seduced her.
“Caro w-w-wants her Phin.” She released her grip on his back and trailed her hands up and down his flanks. “Caro needs Phin.”’
71% - kiss
72% - start of a blow job that is ended
85% - 🔥her on top
“Yes, that’s right, ride me, Caro. As rough as you want. You won’t hurt me.”
92% - 🔥blow job
”Oh, God, yes. You can do whatever you want to me.”