Eloisa James’ HARDLY A GENTLEMAN is the second in her Accidental Brides series and features the Honorable Miss Clara Vetry and Caelan MacCrae, Laird of CaerLaven. Clara goes through a traumatic event and her heartless mother sides with the person who caused the trauma, sending Clara to live with a geriatric aunt. Instead, Clara jumps into a carriage and runs away to Scotland to pretend to be a housekeeper at none other than Caelan’s castle. Hijinks and hilarity ensue before the couple finds their happily ever after.

Ms. James’ books and I have a love-hate relationship. When her books are good, I absolutely adore them. Sadly, that is not often the case. This title starts off very promising. The backstory and the reason Clara flees (trigger warning for sexual assault) London take up a significant portion of the beginning of the book, but I found this to be interesting. Once she meets Caelan, however, and begins her extremely brief ruse of being a housekeeper, everything kind of goes downhill. Both experience insta-lust but I could forgive that because they were also having conversations and learning about each other. However, their first kiss didn't wow me at all, and I felt like I could have skipped it. 

I am not sure why the plot device of Clara pretending to be a housekeeper was present because no one truly believes she’s a housekeeper. I was looking forward to Caelan trying to deny himself since he thought they were from different stations. 

There is, of course, the ever-present precocious child in Caelan’s nephew. He has a pet chicken and isn’t that just the cutest and most precocious thing ever? 

My least favorite thing about this title is the fact that it could have been wrapped up much earlier if Clara and Caelan had just talked to each other. They figured out how to talk to each other about sex, but Caelan couldn’t bring himself to tell Clara the truth about his first marriage and his first wife until the eleventh hour. 

As always, Ms. James’ humor is present and is honestly the reason to go ahead and read this title. Despite my annoyance, I really did find myself grinning at the humor multiple times. The side characters, particularly Mr. Cobbledick, also make HARDLY A GENTLEMAN worth a read. I am very much looking forward to the next title as it involves Torrie’s (from the first novel) sister.