This is one of those frustrating books where there’s a good idea but it gets bogged down in a total and utter lack of tension or conflict.  As a result, it’s an eye-rolling read.

Lady Grace Carpenter is guardian of her seven younger brothers and sisters- something she had to fight for after her mother’s death in order to keep all the kids together. Because she would lose guardianship should she get married, she’s decided that she just won’t. But after a freak rainstorm strands her at an inn with the dude who caught her eye during her first season, she decides to see what the deal with sexytimes is.

Matt, the Earl of Worthington, is guardian of his FOUR younger sisters, and when he sees Grace at the inn, they chat and are so sympatico in terms of politics and women’s rights that he falls completely in love, and makes the decision to propose in the morning after they bang (without exchanging names- she knows who he is, he thinks she looks familiar, but isn’t sure who she is). Grace, however, leaves before he wakes up, no one will tell him who she is, but they’re both heading to London for the season, so….a merry chase is afoot, right?

WRONG.

They meet quickly. Grace puts him off for a few chapters, because she’s convinced that no man would even consider being saddled with 7 children as soon as the vows are exchanged, but does she tell him that’s why she can’t marry him? No. She just cries and runs out of the room a lot. He’s confused because no one will tell him what her damage is, until it’s dragged out of a third party, and then he thinks about it for a page, maybe two, and then he’s like ,”okay, a total of 11 kids between her siblings and mine? We can do that.”

But then there’s several instances of Grace going, “I don’t know if I should get married, what will happen to my servants? What will happen to my companion? Where will we live? Does he REALLY want 11 kids running around?” And then she and Matt bang and then things are fine until the next crisis of conscience.

This goes on for a while. Perhaps all of these instances are an attempt to make it seem like there’s a chance that they won’t be together in the end (it’s a romance, we know there’s a HEA in there – it’s literally required- but at least make the characters not too sure about it). Every conflict isn’t serious and each is solved within ten pages. The kids get along famously. Even the dogs do. There’s no serious impediment to Matt getting guardianship transferred over to him. The license is procured and no one has a problem. Even Grace’s social anxiety is disposed of with a nod to “yup this is a thing she has” and is NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN.

Even when an actual plot sort of shows up to mess around with things, he’s completely ineffectual at complications. Grace has an uncle that could try to take her siblings, and he doesn’t even try until after Matt has guardianship and there could have been a fun legal fight or whatever, and instead we get “welp, that could have been bad, BUT IT WASN’T.”

Then there’s a random-ass kidnapping FOR LITERALLY NO REASON. But don’t worry, it’s resolved within three pages.

I feel like the “how do we take yours, mine, and ours and make a functional family out of the whole mess” could have been a really interesting book. But when that gets resolved so quickly (seriously, the kids all sit down and go “Welp, looks like our elder sibs are getting hitched, so how will we manage disagreements among ourselves?” and THAT’S THAT), there’s just no THERE there.

And that’s too bad, really.