Ten Ways to Be Adored When Landing a Lord - Sarah MacLean (Love By Numbers #2)

Sarah MacLean is an author whose back catalog I am now working through.  After reading Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, I got another of her books, The Rogue Not Taken, from the library.  However, I quickly discovered that the heroine of that book was a side character in the third book of the series that Nine Rules started, so I set to reading through those first.  Ten Ways is the second book there.

Our heroine here is Isabel, the daughter of an earl who has barely kept the estate together in the face of his wasteful behavior--and has run a house for women looking to escape terrible situations to boot.  All of that seems to be in danger when her father dies, the estate is left to a mysterious guardian until her ten-year-old brother can come of age, and there's not a penny to be found.  Oh, and the daughter of a duke shows up on her doorstep looking for help, which Isabel knows is going to cause trouble.

Trouble comes calling indeed, though Isabel doesn't know it right away.  It arrives in the form of Nicholas St. John, the brother of the hero from the first book, who has been asked by the aforementioned duke to find the missing sister, a task he gladly takes up to escape the slavering women of London, who are eager to nab him as one of London's most landable lords.  But when he and Isabel first run into each other, she sees Nick's value in his knowledge of antiquities, particularly marble statues--a bunch of which she owns and is eager to sell to fund the ongoing existence of Minerva House.  With an invitation into Isabel's abode, things are set for the two worlds to collide.

This book relies much more heavily on instalove than the first book did.  While the pacing in the first book was somewhat whacky, it still took place over at least a few weeks.  This book takes place over a number of days, and suddenly Isabel, who has always been leery of men because of the behavior of her father and the plights of women--mostly done over by men--who she shelters at Minerva house, is suddenly gaga over the first cute guy who shows up.  (Note how I said "cute"; other guys showed up at Isabel's house, claiming she had to marry them because her father gambled her away, but none of them seemed remarkably attractive.)  Honestly, Georgianna was a more interesting plot line here.  I wanted to know about her failed romance, what was going to happen to her.  She has her own book later down the line, in another of MacLean's series, but she definitely overshadowed Isabel, who didn't seem nearly as steady and levelheaded as we're supposed to think.  Her instant gaga-ing, but how she refuses to accept help she so desperately needs, just didn't seem to fit, and it didn't work well as a coherent whole.

But this book was mercifully lacking in mentions of "sweet rain," so at least there's that.

Overall, this was enjoyable, but I didn't like it as much as the first one.  I probably wouldn't read it again, and honestly couldn't remember much about it--even Isabel's name--by the time I went to read the third book only a few days later, which doesn't really speak highly of it.  I think there was a lot of cool concepts here, such as Minerva House.  Women helping women is so great to see!  However, as nothing every really happened to threaten this in any serious way, it was underdone and didn't have enough impact to carry the rest of the book.

2 stars out of 5.