The Earl Not Taken is the first book in the Wallflowers of West Lane series. This one involves Poppy who teams up with her friend's brother Rhys to make sure her friend's potential suitor is a decent match and not a dangerous man. She has vowed to never let another friend get hurt in a bad marriage again. Rhys sees it as an opportunity to get to know Poppy a bit better.

I thought this book was really adorable. I loved the characters as well as the romence. Rhys and Poppy were a perfect match. I enjoyed watching them fall in love. Watching Rhys woo her and help her realize marriage would not be the life ending choice she thought it was made the book for me. They had great banter. Along with the main characters, the rest of the "Wallflowers" were a wonderful group of ladies. The friendship between the four women was strong and deep. I look forward to seeing them get their HEAs. I think Faith's book is next. I cant want to read it! I highly recommend this one. It was the perfect romantic escape for me!

DNF at 40%.

I started reading this four months ago and at first I really enjoyed it. The idea of four young women, friends from school, looking out for each other is society is not a new one, think of Lisa Kleypas's Wallflowers series.

Poppy Arrington is a bit of a modern woman shoved into a historical novel, she has been put off marriage by the bad examples she has seen and she is determined to remain single, when one of her friends is about to be married to a Duke that none of them know she determines (in the best Nancy Drew tradition) to investigate on her friend's behalf.

Poppy's nemesis is Rhys Draper, an early encounter where Poppy stumbled upon Rhys and a young woman indulging in some afternoon delight has coloured their entire relationship, added to which he is the older brother of one of her best friends.

Rhys cannot believe that he was oblivious to his sister being abused by her husband, now he understands Poppy's desire to ensure that nothing similar happens to their other friends. Together the two of them will investigate whether this duke is hiding a secret.

So far, so good. I love an enemies to lovers historical with a determined heroine and a strong, but mistaken hero. Poppy looks down on Rhys but when they meet again years after their first encounter Rhys starts to look at Poppy in a different way.

Then it all went a bit off the rails for me. Poppy and Rhys go off into the country to investigate the Duke and end up having to stay the night with a mysterious Middle-Eastern gentleman. This jarred with the way in which young women had to behave at that time, then Poppy rescues the man's horses from a burning barn while all the men just stood around and watched. I could just about get over that, but then Poppy asks Rhys to teach her about sex, to make love to her just once so she understands what it is all about.

From a promising start this just degenerated for me, then I started to find the characters' speech a bit false and forced and that was the final straw.

Sorry, not for me.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I love the cover to this book! It is a fresh take for a historical fiction romance. I found the book to be OK. I thought it started out strong but fell flat after the first few chapters. My biggest problem was that I found the characters boring.
Thank you for this ARC. This is my honest review.

Poppy and her three best friends want a say in their marriages. They form a pact to help each other in any way they can. When one is set to be married without ever meeting him. Poppy enlists the help of her childhood nemesis Rhys Draper, Earl of Marsden. He wants to put their past behind them but can she?

Such a good book and the characters had a lot of depth.

This book was good, but I am really only giving this five stars because of the hero Rhys. I was attracted to him from the description of the book, and I found myself rooting for him throughout. I was not entirely fond of Poppy, but I thought the romance between the two was nice. he cover of the book is cute and whimsical. But, that said, while one cannot judge a book by its cover, I often am a bit annoyed with books that, recently, use a more modern or cartoon-ish cover for an historical romance that is supposed to take place in the eighteenth century or Regency periods, for example. It is slightly deceiving to those who are unfamiliar with hairstyles or mode of dress during those times. I have studied enough of these histories to know, at a glance, what the images convey, but I think a more 'obvious' cover for period books would be more apt. That said, though, one cannot go wrong with a book about wallflowers. They always seem to bond with the best of heroes...and so romantic! :)

Here is my confession: I read this book some time ago and forgot to review it. When I was looking for a title to read last night for a quick escape, I started to read this again, realised I had already read it, but couldn't remember most of the details - they obviously didn't stick with me too much. So overall, it was an "okay" read, but not dynamic enough to make an impression. I am not disappointed in taking the time to read dit, it just didn't pop.

This book follows Poppy and Rhys. Poppy is a member of a group of woman who call themselves the Wallflowers of West Lane and Rhys is another members brother.

When a member of the Wallflowers is told she is marrying a man without ever even seeing him, the girls get together to determine everything about him. Rhys agrees to help them.

Things I liked:
-The cover art
-Rhys is super sweet and cute
-Several of the supporting characters are funny and entertaining.

Didn't like:
-Poppy for the most part. She is really annoying for most of the book and seems to have a grudge against all men for a reason that I didn't totally believe. Mostly just to keep the plot going.
-The origin story of how the girls met and use of the phrase "Wallflowers of West Lane" is repeated often throughout the book. Got quite repetitive.

I am however quite interested to see how the other girls stories work out, they were much more likable than Poppy.

"The Earl Not Taken" was not what I expected it to be. Poppy provided a strong, willful heroin who held her convictions close to her heart while Rhys was the not-as-he-first-appeared hero who stole you heart before the storyline really got going. I suppose I expected more humor and development between the two. While the book was not what I expected it proved to be an entertaining diversion during quarantine.

I seized on this book as a distraction from the flood of bad news we’ve been dealing with lately, This is a fun and incoherent tale of Rhys and Penelope, long-time friends through Aurora's friend of Rhys 'sister / Penelope. Penelope and her closest boarding school companions call themselves the "Wallflowers",( when an author write under this or mentions this she is 100% aware of Kleypas...) and they are committed to saving one another from being forced to marry disreputable persons. They have their hands full since their families seem bound and determined to match them eligible with men who are wrong with them.

My one concern with the narrative is that it leaned on the least favourite trope too heavily( misunderstanding). Owing to lack of communication, misunderstanding between the H&H Penelope continues to me as being pretty immature; she still goes off in a sulk and is unwilling to listen.
In general, this was perfect to whisk away from current events.


Thank you to the publishers for the opportunity to review this book.

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of The Earl Not Taken!❤️

My favorite genre is romance. More modern day romance. I recently read a cozy mystery series where the mother read books about courting and arranged marriage and Dowries. I was kind of interested but didn’t know what to read.
Well one day The Earl Not Taken cake up on my Facebook feed for a group Between The Chapters Book Club. From that moment I knew I had to read this book. I must say I love this book.

I’m really bummed that i have the kindle version because I really want this book on my bookshelf that’s how much I love this book!

The storyline comes from the Regency Romance Era. Not only do you get a little bit of a history lesson you get a true love story of a woman trying to “rebel” from the ways of past generations.


A short and sweet romance where your shouting from the top of you lungs saying just kiss the girl lol. The Earl Not Taken well turn you on to regency romance for sure.

I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this story a lot. It was a quick read and a great pallet cleanser. I really enjoyed Poppy's character as a whole. I do think the relationship between her and Rhys moved a bit fast and was too "insta love" for me.

I will most definitely be picking up the next book in this series.

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this review copy.

The Earl Not Taken is all about the romance between Poppy and Rhys.

She wants nothing to do with him. He is a rake and a reprobate as far as she is concerned and she has no interest in marrying anyone she doesn't have strong feelings for.

Rhys, on the other hand, is fascinated with Poppy. He has known her for most of his life and is not sure why she dislikes him so much. 

But whether they like it or not, they're going to need to work together if they want to discover what the duke their friend, Faith, is engaged to is hiding. 

And of course, because this is a romance, the longer they're around each other, the more they realize that the spark between them isn't going out anytime soon (much to Poppy's chagrin).

OH BOY! These two. As soon as they're alone in SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE, they go off. They have sex on a chaise lounge in a stranger's home. My jaw dropped. This is like Regency/Victorian time...what the hell??? I mean I loved it but also...whaaat??? *fans self*

I also enjoyed the friendship between Poppy and the other Wallflowers of West Lane. They care for each other so deeply that they want to make sure they're safe so matter what. Ultimate friendship goals! I would read a whole book about just them.

That being said, I wasn't completely in love with this one. The relationship between Poppy and Rhys moved a little fast for me and I just wasn't as invested as I wanted to be in their mission to make sure Faith was safe. 

It looks like the next book in this series is all about Faith and her duke which definitely intrigues me. I just wish this book was as captivating as the next book sounds. I'm giving The Earl Not Take 3 out of 5 stars.

The Earl Not Taken by A.S Fenichel is available now!

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for the free eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book was just ok for me, the characters and story were ok but nothing really stood out to me. I would like to read more from the author.

This novel was as a page turner and I could not stop reading!!
There were a few bits and pieces that I did not enjoy reading or I didn’t agree with the character development from the story.
Other than that, it was a good read!!

I am pretty disappointed in this book. I loved the premise and the idea of it, but the story ended up not being as entertaining as I had hoped. When reading a historical fiction, some of my favorite parts are seeing the daily life of the characters that live in this era. Taking tea, needlework, calling on friends, etc. And while this book had a little of that, I didn't feel that Regency era charm that I love in other books in this genre. Another thing that bothered me was the characters. I felt no connection to Poppy or to any of the other characters in this book. I especially did not like Rhys at all. I'm not quite sure how to explain it but this book almost felt like a modern romance... but not in modern times. This didn't feel like a historical fiction at all.

This was...ok. It wasn't horrible, but it also wasn't wonderful or even great. It was just ok. There were several sweet moments, but much of it was silly, too long, with a heroine who acted immature and unwilling to grow (while still knowing more about certain *adult* things than she would have any way to know about?).

This is a very typical historical romance novel . And I don’t really read this genre much but I saw quite a few posts about this book on Instagram and wanted to try it out, especially since I’ve been looking for some lighter reads. ⁣
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What I liked about this book:⁣ * The friendships - and there were quite a few different dynamics and I enjoyed reading about them ⁣ * there were some original plot points ⁣
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What I didn’t like about this book ⁣ * there was a lot of repetitive dialogue in this story ⁣ * the family relationships, for the most part, were all very dysfunctional⁣
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This book was a lot of fun to read! I enjoyed meeting Poppy and the other Wallflowers! They're a spirited bunch of characters who don't fit in with society's straitlaced rules, and were a lot of fun to read about!

This is the story of Rhys and Poppy falling in love-while they're investigating the potential spouse of another Wallflower, Faith. Said spouse and Faith are the leads of the next book, so I enjoyed getting to know all of them, and all this delicious conflict, since said spouse finds out about their investigation and isn't happy!

My one thing is, that Poppy's flaw, as she recognizes in this book, is that she runs away from what scares her, what she doesn't like. And once she comes to terms with that, the next time an instance comes up where she'd run, she doesn't, because she resolved not to do so. My thing is, that people don't change that quickly. I guess maybe because it was the first time afterwards, that she actually follows through, and maybe she'll have slip ups in the future? That would make sense.

Oh, another thing. These times are pretty restrictive, but Rhys is trying to comfort Poppy about the between the bed sheets activities, and the way he said that, it put down his other lovers, and that aggravated me. I know he's a product of his times, but, not cool, dude!

I enjoyed this book, it was a lot of fun to read!

Thank you to Netgalley and Publisher Kensington Books for an advance reader copy of this book for an honest review.

This is a very typical historical romance novel . And I don’t really read this genre much but I saw quite a few posts about this book on Instagram and wanted to try it out, especially since I’ve been looking for some lighter reads.

What I liked about this book:
* The friendships - and there were quite a few different dynamics and I enjoyed reading about them
* there were some original plot points

What I didn’t like about this book
* there was a lot of repetitive dialogue in this story
* the family relationships, for the most part, were all very dysfunctional

3 stars ⭐️

There is a sequel to this novel and I would most likely read it .

I received an e-ARC copy from NetGalley.

This was a cute period romance that I deeply enjoyed.
As I use the CAWPILE system (created by the lovely G from Book Roast), I will comment on those points.

Characters. The characters in this book were lovely. They all had their own personality and showed it. Poppy, our main female character, is a strong woman. She is powerful enough to maintain her beliefs, to not want to fall into the strict rules of her society and to wish for a better life for herself. Rhys, the male main character, is right-headed and thoughtful. It has been a long time since I've seen a love interest that caring and charming. Aurora, Faith and Mercy are the rest of the Wallflowers of West Lane. They are all endearing and each has her own personality.
The only thing I would ask is for more inclusive characters.

Atmosphere. The atmosphere created by the author was enjoyable. It was beautiful to imagine characters in this period, which I really enjoy. However, there was some election of vocabulary that didn't seem to fit within the period.

Writing. I found the writing easy to fly-through. It wasn't full of wordy descriptions but still created the ambience.

Plot. I must admit it is not the most intricated plot I've ever read. Even so, I found it very enjoyable. Seeing how their love grows little by little, with the addition of the mystery was really good.

Intrigue. As for intrigue, I will only say this book has kept me up late a couple of nights, unable to put it down.

Logic. The behaviour of the characters seemed quite coherent to me. Maybe not with the period, but with their personalities. The only thing that bothered me was some elections of vocabulary.

Enjoyment. About enjoyment, I can only repeat myself and say that I truly liked this book. With the current situation, I can't think of a better way to relieve some tension from our minds.