Eloisa James has done it again! Viscount in Love is a perfect historical romance with just the right level of spice.

I liked reading this book and look forward to the next book in this series. I have read many books by Eloisa James and have like every one.

Everything Eloisa James writes just makes me happy, and Viscount In Love is her writing at it's very best. This book brought me so much joy! It was funny, sweet, and simply perfect. Dominic and Torie were completely delightful together and don't even get me started otwhow much I adored the twins. I loved loved loved this book!

Seriously, this was such a wonderful start to a new series. I am so excited for more!

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I have been a fan of Eloisa James since her very first book and Viscount in Love will be another for my keeper shelf.
Viscount Dominic Kelbourne has suddenly become guardian to twins, Miss Florence and Master Valentine, children of his late sister Lady Dorney. Although his grief is real on losing his colorful sister, he knows little to nothing about raising children. Thankfully the children have a nanny and he is betrothed to a suitable lady, Leonora so the children shouldn’t be much of a bother. Leonora isn’t the least bit interested in the children or Viscount Dominic it seems and getting her to set a wedding date is an almost impossible task. Her unconventional sister Torie on the other hand adores the children and they return her feelings.
When Leonora suddenly elopes with another man, Dominic isn’t heartbroken. He was only marrying for duty after all. But he does need to marry, so he decides that his former betrothed sister Torie will fit the bill. After all she already knows him, loves the twins and gets along famously with them so what could be more perfect.
Torie on the other hand has no desire to marry Dominic and wishes to lead her own life, painting and visiting his children suit her fine. Her inability to read in no way diminishes her intelligence and it shows. The children read to her and she teaches them other life lessons. A perfect combination as far as she is concerned. She even enjoys her battles with Dominic, drawing closer to him even when she would rather not. Watching his battle to win her makes it a fun read.
This book had me smiling from beginning to end and, as always, I hated for the book to end. The witty characters are brought to life and you feel like you are right there with them enjoying every moment!
Do yourself a favor and grab Viscount in Love, you won’t be sorry!

Eloisa James never fails to astound with her storytelling ability. Her characters here are vibrant fully realized individuals, a farmer-like viscount and his, eventual, love interest, a dyslexic lady who creates portraits of rabbits and flowers in oil, painstakingly. There story revolves around twins brought up in an unconventional household that is far more dysfunctional than healthy. The discourse fairly crackles with energy and individuality. Parental failings create protagonists struggling through negative messages towards reaching a normative balance. The story is transformative and moving.

Torie is a free-spirited artist who has accepted that her family and The Ton see her as simple because she can't read. She's content to be appreciated for her beauty and left mostly alone. Until her seemingly perfect sister's fiance, Viscount Dominic Kelbourne, finds himself in charge of his eccentric and wild niece and nephew. Torie's sister runs away from her engagement just as Dominic decides that Torie will make an excellent nanny. She's not wife material, but the children love her and their passionate debates lead to even more passionate kisses. Will the grumpy Viscount realize that there's more to Torie and his feelings for her than he thought possible?

It's fun and eccentric and Torie is an excellent leading lady. I love that she has such a blasé attitude about what people think of her and is so willing to look after the orphans who most people see as wild little animals. Dominic being such a tight-ass initially who warms up to the twins and Torie as he spends time with them and remembers that he doesn't have to be a cold and perfect automaton makes for some excellent emotional moments.

James is very good at giving her heroines agency and showing that they're capable of what they set their minds to without the need of a man, but they always find the perfect counterbalance in the heroes. I think this is one of the best examples of opposites attract she's done yet. And I loved the twins, which is surprising because I usually don't like kids in my romance. They're such interesting individuals that I'm looking forward to eventually (hopefully) getting their own romance stories.

Overall, Eloisa James once again crafted a historical romance that hits all the right spots and entertains while also delivering some positive messages about self. I highly recommend this one.

Delighted thanks to NetGalley and Avon for the wonderfully romantic read!

Viscount Dominic Kelbourne has been betrothed to the lovely Leonora Sutton for two years and he's finally ready to set the wedding date. His intended is perfect - perfectly attired, perfectly coifed, perfectly mannered - and yet, he can't picture life with her. When she meets his sister's children, she is horrified that he expects her to be their new mother. So horrified, she suggests that he send them to live in the country with a nanny - preferably her illiterate sister, Victoria, who seems to get along with the twins famously. After all, Torie isn't expected to marry anyway since no one wants a wife who can't read even if she's a beautiful woman.

Torie is used to the subtle put-downs she receives from both her father and her sister, but when Leonora expects her to step in and fill a role that Lord Kelbourne intends for his wife, she refuses. When she doesn't get her way, Leonora elopes with another man and leaves Dominic with a problem he can't solve. Torie, on the other hand, fell in love with the twins. Yes, they're odd and outspoken, but they're also inquisitive and accepting. They enjoy reading to her, and don't expect her to return the favor. She enjoys taking them on outings. As Dom watches Torie interact with the children, he's drawn into their circle and can't help being drawn to Torie. He needs a wife and Torie may not read, but she is a lively companion, unlike her sister. He knows she wants to marry for love, but can he convince her to marry for respect?

Torie is so fun. Her quick wit and courageous, try-anything-once attitude get her into and out of trouble more than once. I loved when Dominic finally opened his eyes to how truly smart Torie is. The children are an absolute HOOT! I snickered so often when they oh-so-seriously discussed their list of words they shouldn't say in public.

Readers who enjoy Regency romance with a hefty dose of steam will love Viscount in Love.

I loved the first half. I liked seeing Torie stand up to Dom. The twins added the fun aspect, absolutely adorable. Then the second half came and it went downhill. Don became insufferable to the point I couldn’t stand him. I got tired of hearing about Torie’s inability to read. We got it! We didn’t need to hear about in every chapter! I didn’t feel a love connection between the two, just lust. Unfortunately, one of my least favorites from Eloisa James.

The chemistry! This book was such a treat. It was my first James book and it definitely will not be my last. I thoroughly enjoyed it so much. The characters, the storytelling!

I’m always here for a new Eloisa book and the synopsis for this one sounded perfect.

I love love loved Torie and Dom. She’s sunshine and he’s grumpy and together they’re sort of thrown together for the sake of the twins (who absolutely steal every single scene they’re in.) Torie and Dom have instant animosity, an insane amount of chemistry, and are both quick to temper and misunderstandings. Somehow, it just made me want to mash their faces together even more.

Plot wise, it was so satisfying. It’s a mix of slow meandering in their getting to know each other coupled with the frenzy of wanting each other more than polite society would find acceptable. I loved the fights, the apologies, and even more, the understanding that finally finally finally came between them. The ending chapters are some of the best and I could have easily read a million more pages of this new family.

Overall, this is a wonderful start to a new series and I can’t wait to read whoever is next. Oh, and we better get a cameo or 5 from these two.

**Huge thanks to the publisher for providing the arc free of charge**

Torie's content in knowing that she'll never be a man's first choice in a wife due to her dyslexia. Her sister's betrothed to a Viscount and hopefully, she'll get to help raise their children in the country, and maybe that will be enough. However, all of their lives are turned upside down when Viscount Kelbourne suddenly becomes the guardian of his sister's twins. Torie becomes quick friends with Val and Florence, not shying away from their odd interests, but her sister decided that isn't the life she dreamed of and leaves Kelbourne to marry another man. With Kelbourne in need of a wife to sway society's opinion of him, Torie is looking more and more like the perfect option.

I think Torie may be the first heroine, especially in a historical romance, I've encountered that cannot read or write. I had never really thought about how it would affect someone in society's options, especially as a woman who is expected to take on all household management when she marries. Torie's relationship with Val and Florence was adorable, and they were hilarious. I wish we could have seen them grow up and enter society, but perhaps a future book? Kelbourne wasn't my favorite leading man, but Eloisa James' writing made it a quick read with lots of heart.

While I enjoyed this, it wasn't my favorite Eloisa James book. Her witty banter and smart heroines always entertain. Overall it was a little forgettable, but would recommend it to a friend who loves historical romance.

I have not regularly read historical romance, for the past, oh, several years (probably more years than I realize, to be honest). My book log shows that I read eight historical romances in 2020 (this once would have been a paltry number), and since then I’ve only read one or two a year; this reading has consisted entirely of one series by Julie Ann Long.

So, I started Viscount in Love with a little trepidation – would the issues that drove me away from a subgenre that I once loved rise up to annoy me again?

Unfortunately, the answer was yes.

The book opens at a ball, where Victoria Sutton, in her first season, is talking to her friend Clara. She’s making fun of her sister Leonora’s fiance, Viscount Dominic Kelbourne, who they are watching from across the room. The viscount, in Torie’s opinion, is “haughty—and bad-tempered.” We also immediately hear about his “volatile” Italian mistress, the mention of which feels anachronistic between two tender-aged debutantes, though I’m somewhat inured to that sort of thing in historical romance. Would that I were inured to “volatile” Italian mistresses; they seem to be the only type of mistress any of these manly historical romance heroes keep (to be fair, occasionally they are fiery Spanish mistresses rather than volatile Italian ones).

Dom catches them, naturally. Torie and Dom then verbally spar until supper is called, at which point Leonora shows up, outs the fact that Torie is dyslexic (they never call it that in the book, of course, just emphasize that she can’t read or write), and stalks off with her fiancé. Torie thinks the two deserve each other because they are both so cold. But which is Dom – cold or hot-tempered? And Leonora is portrayed as very proper, but would a proper lady blurt out her sister’s embarrassing “affliction” to her fiancé in a public place?

Inconsistent characterization – mostly of Dom but also a few other characters, chiefly Leonora, was one of my main issues with Viscount in Love. More on that in a bit.

The story shifts forward two years, to the funeral of Dom’s sister and brother-in-law, felled by that most common historical romance calamity, a carriage accident. Torie and Leonora (the latter still a fiancée rather than a bride) are in attendance.

Dom was not close to his sister but felt an affinity to her for having suffered under their terrible father, and Dom wants to do right by his orphaned twin niece and nephew, Florence and Valentine. Leonora is immediately haughtily appalled by the idea of having anything to do with children who are rumored to be illegitimate (Dom’s sister was apparently known to get around).

Torie, on the other hand, immediately bonds with Florence and Val, who are the most precocious 11-year-olds in the land. In fact, the three become such great friends that she takes to visiting them in their London home daily, teaching them painting (Torie is an accomplished artist).

Through these visits, Dom and Torie start to interact more. While they are like oil in water in some respects (him, forbidding and proper; her, daffy and frivolous), they do begin to find common ground in their care for Val and Florence. Thankfully, at this point there’s not *too* much mental lusting. I’m not a big fan of mental lusting in general in romance, and even less so in a story where the hero is engaged to the heroine’s sister.

It isn’t probably a spoiler that the engagement ends, which leaves the door open for Dom and Torie. The course of true love doesn’t run smooth, predictably.

So, as noted previously, one of my main issues with Viscount in Love was inconsistent characterization. Torie was fairly consistent, but I found Dom hard to get a handle on. I thought he was supposed to be a stick-up-the-you-know-what type of aristocrat, which made his engagement to the icy Leonora logical. But then one of his main characteristics is supposedly a bad temper. I didn’t feel like I saw the bad temper much, but it gets talked about a lot.

Primarily he seems to yell a bunch in the House of Lords, about slavery (he’s opposed). So he’s…kind of overly proper and kind of fiery, but the two halves never quite made sense together. Later in the book, he becomes less proper and uptight, which may have made sense in the context of his blossoming relationship with Torie. But it highlighted the fact that I really didn’t understand who Dom was. He had an unhappy childhood and hated his father. But he didn’t have the sort of trajectory that I like to see in historical romance heroes and heroines, where they grow in the course of the story and to some degree are healed by love (that latter of which I DO NOT believe in in real life – don’t try this at home, kids). The abusive father storyline just sort of fizzled out.

Leonora was also inconsistent. She’s thought of by Torie as being incredibly proper and even demure (or at least she pretends to be around Dom, supposedly). But in her scenes with Dom she comes off as a strong-willed snob. She’s so unpleasant it’s hard to understand Dom’s feelings about marrying her. He seems resigned to it, noting at one point that a gentleman would never break an engagement. But I wanted to understand what drew him to her in the first place and get a sense of how he came to understand they weren’t suited. A lot of the Dom/Leonora relationship feels like it was entirely engineered by Leonora and Dom was just along for the ride, which doesn’t make him seem like a strong hero.

In general Viscount in Love felt pretty History Lite to me – the characters and relationships (those precocious twins!) felt anachronistic and unrealistic. (I even side-eyed Torie as a nickname for Victoria; I would think Vicki would be more common. I don’t actually know, and I know authors get annoyed when readers assume something is anachronistic when they don’t actually know, but here we are. When I lose trust in a narrative, all bets are off.)

It’s not all bad – the book got more absorbing as the story went on, and the relationship that grew between Dom and Torie was actually quite sweet. I liked seeing Torie come into her own surrounded for once by people who didn’t think she was stupid because she was dyslexic. (In addition to being a talented painter, it’s suggested that Torie possesses and eidetic memory.)

It just so happens that I have a particular set of complaints against historical romance at this point, and this book pinged my radar on many of them. I’m giving Viscount in Love a straight C.

I love regency romance and this was pretty good. If you like a sexy man and a woman who wants love above all else, this is the story for you.

I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. This in no way impacted on my view.

For years Viscount Dominic Kelbourne has been engaged to the perfect Lady, but she's been putting off the wedding for some reason. So when Dominic's notorious sister and brother-in-law die, leaving their two young children in Dominic's care, he's happy he has the perfect bride to mother the twins. But she decides she's not ready to mother two potential bastards, and flees with another man, leaving her sister, Torie, to pick up the pieces. Torie has been on the shelf for the last 3 seasons, ever since her inability to read became public knowledge. Even so, she takes to the twins immediately, and can see herself being their nanny if that's what's needed. Dominic, however, decides he wants her for himself, and will stop at nothing to marry her, even if that means opening up his heart to love.

I really enjoy Eloisa's books, so seeing her latest available on NetGalley was a dream. Viscount in Love is the start to a new series, though some characters from previous books make a reappearance. We meet Dominc Kelbourne in this book, who had a difficult childhood with his father, raising him to be the perfect viscount, and not showing any form of weakness or love. His sister rebelled to the level that she has become notorious to the ton, and the stigma of her notoriety is causing damage to his own reputation. Finding the perfect bride is his wish, and he doesn't care about anything frivolous like love, especially not when the children come into his care. I absolutely love the found family trope, and though Dominic was actually family with the twins, he expected to raise them from afar, even better if he can send them off to school. However, he falls in love with them, and is their dad in every sense. Torie is fully embraced by them, and they love her like a mother from nearly the beginning. It was hard seeing some of the hate she got, especially from her own family, considering how intelligent she was, and such a wonderful artist too. They didn't have an easy romance, but it was definitely one that was worth the effort they put in.

Thanks to Avon and Netgalley for this advanced copy!

Eloisa James is such a foundational author for historical romances and I've enjoyed so many of her books over the years. The last few books I've read of her have felt less focused and fun as her past series, but Viscount in Love feels like a step back towards the direction she was going in her earlier work. Dom and Tori are fun and sassy and how fast Dom realizes that his former fiance's sister is the one for him. I struggled with the fact that Tori couldn't read and how often it was brought up with no recognition of what was actually happening (she is probably dyslexic? Or has some other learning issue?), though of course Dom doesn't care which is great.

While I really enjoyed this book, parts of it felt uneven. That being said, I'll read James forever.

Viscount in Love is the latest regency romance by Eloisa James. Torie’s sister found a favorable match in her betrothed, Viscount Dominic Kelbourne, a rich lord whose requirements she met and who met her checklist of requirements as well. But two years after their match, they still have not wed, and a new wrinkle forms in the form of Lord Kelborne’s recently orphaned niece and nephew whom he takes in.

When Torie’s sister jilts Dominic by marrying another man in a rush wedding, Torie is saddened by the newfound impropriety of visiting Dominic’s young charges. A young woman visiting the residence of a man who is not family? Unseemly! But when Dominic proposes marriage between the two of them and convinces Torie to agree, Torie, delighted by the children, might regret the man.

I found Viscount in Love to be surprisingly deep. Torie is a fascinating character who is made out to be a fool by her family for her inability to read, while Dominic, determined to shield Torie from the taunts of the ton, nevertheless hurts her when he neglects to examine how his own actions might perpetuate the belief. They are a great pair, and their communication develops realistically.

Overall, Viscount in Love is a fun romance—made all the better by Florence and Valentine.

Eloisa James writes historical romances that engage readers with every plot point and every single character. This book is especially true with the side characters of the macabre twins whose dark humor is a highlight of the novel. The love interests have chemistry for days, but it takes awhile for their regard to catch up.

As someone who says I don’t always gravitate towards historical romance, I binged this in just a few settings! I had a great time and can’t wait to dive into more of Eloisa James’ backlist!

This is classic Eloisa James, need I say more? You close the book with a sigh.

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager | Avon for providing an eARC of this book. All opinions are my own.