3.5 stars rounded up to 4 -I really loved the premise of this book, but it was a bit slow in the middle. I feel like there were a good 50 pages around the 50-75% mark that could’ve been removed without taking anything from the plot. Otherwise, this was an incredibly fun read unlike anything I’ve ever read before!

This is a historical romance, marriage of convenience book, but just wasnt a vibe for me.

I found this book to be a little underwhelming. I was expecting a bit more from the MCs, but their interactions, and relationship just felt a little too forced and not in the way a reader enjoys.
I kept hoping for that big "awwwwh" moment and i never got it.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3. I read the description, and I wasn’t a fan of Virginia Heath’s “Never Fall for Your Fiancee,” so why did I request this? Heath’s book uses the usual “fake relationship” trope, and while I could visualize the book as a funny TV series, I didn’t care for it on the printed page. Here the trope is a fake relationship but with children. That’s touching a third rail to me. Children that Will and Emmeline think it is perfectly fine to then hand back to the horrible orphanage from whence they came, but hey, they’d have comportment skills now! The marriage of convenience that Will and Emmeline have so she could keep her ancestral home and he could have someone organize his life and help him make connections for a strong career made sense and was acceptable, and one could see love and physical attraction grow from that. But then she becomes so desperate that she makes up a family--nevermind the psychological profile one could make about a woman making up the imaginary family she could felt she could never have--and when he finally finds out, he just goes along with it??
Of course Will and Emmeline grow to love the children--and grow a passion with each other, the results which are barely hinted at-- at the end, but the ends didn’t even remotely justify the means. And I don’t know how they expect the ton to deal with them, anyway, after they’ve both effectively turned their reputation, and those of people in their immediate vicinity, into tatters. It’s a selfish way of attempting a selfless act. The happy ending doesn’t feel as deserving as it should (for the kids maybe; the adults not so much.)

Read if you like: marriage of convenience
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Emmie and Will get married in order to save Emmie’s childhood home and advance Will’s political career. When something threatens their perfect life, they have to find a way to create the perfect family.
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While this book was cute, I wanted to see more insight into the development of Emmie and Will’s relationship, as this was marketed as a historical romance, but there was more focus on the children they took in in order to further their familial image.

I have been provided with a review copy of Something in the Heir from NetGalley for an impartial review. Oh my gosh this story was just epic. I just couldn’t put this story down and I was just captivated by everything that was taking place. The author truly outdid herself with this story. This story just had my emotions all over the place and I am so sad to see this book end. I just can’t wait to see what’s next from this author.

This book was pure joy!! I really loved Emmie & Will Pershing's story. The kids in this made me laugh out loud. This book gives a good look into how terrible things were during this time period for orphan children. Such a sad state of affairs. It also really highlights the differences between classes. Highly recommend reading this book for some fun entertainment.

This is a historical romance, marriage of convenience book. Overall, I enjoyed it!

Will and Emmie marry each other for different reasons and grow along the way. Two orphans end up involved in their plan, which did take me by surprise!

Fun and easy read!

I found this book to be a little underwhelming. Overall, it's a good read - with some entertaining characters - especially the children, who were cute and a bit endearing. I did appreciate that there were some additional plot elements to try to enhance the ending that I automatically knew/expected once the children were 'borrowed' from an orphanage.

I was expecting a bit more from the MCs. They felt a bit two dimensional and their interactions were stilted. There wasn't much build/romance at all between the two - and their relationship arc wasn't very engaging for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review.

This was a fun and entertaining read. It was wonderful to see a family built through alternative means and to see the dynamics of this in the book. It was truly enjoyable.

Wonderfully different, had me smiling and gave me the warm and fuzzies. A joy to read. Thank you netgalley and publisher for this arc in exchange of an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!
This one had a surprising plot and I found it to be quite a delight. Plenty of hijinx and a novel way to bring the hero and heroine together as a couple. A tad slow in some parts but overall enjoyable read.

Suzanne Enoch is wonderful and lovely and I would love to read more books by her. However, I think my feelings on this book are a little bit of the victim of false advertising. This isn't totally a "romance" and felt more like a story about a family. I think I would've enjoyed it more had I realized what I was getting into - but I'll absolutely be picking up more books by Enoch in the future!

An heiress who is trying to fulfill her obligations per her grandfather the Duke after the marriage she arranged herself. But then she gets caught up in her stories and now she has to show up and prove herself and her fictional children. May be trigger warnings for infertility since a lot of innocent comments about why she can't just have her own children. Now couples don't speak of their journey openly back then I am sure they definitely didn't.
Emmeline and her husband had been living separate lives and to the outside appeared the perfect household but didn't have a personal relationship. Once they tried to find real children to fill in the fictional children's role they would ask why they didn't call each other their names and such. The way their relationship turned back into a romantic one through becoming parents to these two kids was so sweet. They rediscovered their love for each other and realized that they had grown so much from the people they were when they married and they weren't the same person.
Though there was a lot more trouble happening with these two children from an orphanage in London that were basically knicking everything to try to come up with an escape plan if they are sent back to the orphanage.
This is such a sweet story of a found family which had a lot of trouble getting to where they need to be to become a family to possibly keep the children.
The relationships with the butler, and other workers in the house who were more family than anything else was also sweet.

Thank you stmartinspress and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

This was a fun, cute and sweet historical romance with a really touching found-family. It wasn't the best historical romance book I've read, just because it had a little bit more of the modern feel to it that would fit better into that sub-category of historical or regency romances.

I always appreciate NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book, I did enjoy it!

It’s been a while since I’ve read a historical, and the blurb for this looked suspenseful and interesting, so I thought I would give it a try.

Will and Emmeline married to fulfill the requirements to save Emmeline’s treasured estate Winnover Hall. They also have to conceive a child within 5 years, to keep the estate. When Will and Emmeline’s love life didn’t produce an heir, Emmy needs to come up with something. That something was a big lie -- that they had not one but two children. Things get a bit dicey when they are asked to bring the children to meet the relative forcing these conditions on them.

Of course, everyone knows how one lie begets another, so what we have here are lies, lies and more lies as the story progresses.

After borrowing two children from the orphanage, they move forward with a plan to continue their deception. There were some interesting things happening here. The children make a contract with Will and Emmeline for the things they want -- to learn to read and write, fencing, and many others. And also a permanent home somewhere when their time is up. But when Rose and George's older brother shows up, he threatens everything they worked for.

There’s definite contrasts in this story, such as the contrast between the rich and poor and what happens when the unfortunate get opportunities they wouldn’t normally have. I really liked some of the social commentary that is woven into the story.

There's also an interesting dynamic happening with Will and Emmeline. After 8 years of marriage, neither one knows how the other feels about them. Will has nursed a love for Emmeline for the 8 years but believed that she only wanted a marriage of convenience. Emmeline believes that Will married her so he could have a helpmate or partner in his work, but not for any of the other marital benefits. Their love life (or lack thereof) and the misunderstandings between them are very interesting and I would have loved more about that. I also found the pace to be a bit slow and repetitive, but I just had to know how everything turned out!

There’s a lovely conclusion to the story that I really liked. It’s easy to see what will save them from the lies they’ve told, but it was a very entertaining ride to get to the conclusion. I enjoyed the crazy dichotomy of truth and lies that is somehow appealing and annoying at the same time in this story. And in spite of some predictability, I really did like Emmy, Will, Rose and George’s story.

💬 𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨: I enjoyed this book, but it was but at all what I was expecting! It is definitely a very unique story, and I enjoyed the multiple POVs a lot. I thought this book was allll romance, but actually it didn't have that much and I was disappointed by that. Tbh I thought this was a romcom!

✍🏼 𝘼𝙪𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙧: Suzanne Enoch
🗓️ 𝙋𝙪𝙗 𝘿𝙖𝙮: out now!!
📚 𝙂𝙚𝙣𝙧𝙚: Regency Romance?

Thank you St Martin's Press for this e-ARC!

3.5⭐

This book has so much going against it. It's presented as a romance, but is less romance and more comical fiction. There are two children that play a huge part of the book. There is exploitation of said children. The story is told from various viewpoints, including adults and children. There are very contrived circumstances. And yet....I kept reading it. Somehow, Enoch manages to keep the reader going to see what happens and how it all plays out.

Emmeline and William have a classic marriage of convenience constructed so that she is able to keep her childhood home through the regulations of her grandfather, the duke. The upholding of these guidelines means that they must produce heirs. When that doesn't happen as planned, Emmeline creates fake heirs that she describes throughout years of her marriage in letters to her family. The problem comes in when it comes time for her and Will to attend her grandfather's birthday celebration with said heirs. She must confess to Will and face losing their home.

The biggest problem I had with this book is that they truly do take advantage of two young orphans. They are little using them to help maintain their own wants. It is just on this side of cruel and a tough situation to get past. While it does work out well in the end, and there appears to be true character growth, I'm not 100% sold on Enoch saving them wholly from this initial attitude. It's a true sharp turn from beginning to end. In addition, Will and Emmeline just weren't on the page enough for a traditional romance. The romance became secondary to the story of the two little ones leaving the book with a complete different feel from that which was expected. The children weren't as annoying as I would have thought; however, I just wasn't interested in this type of book at this time. All of it together just left me dissatisfied with my reading experience.

That being said, I still give this one 3 stars. The writing is fantastic and, should it be approached as a non-romance, the book is good. I would love to read more from Enoch in the future but will be sure to understand more of what I'm getting into with the story. As long as you are okay with more of a sweet, family story with some laughs instead of a true romance, I would say you should give this one a try.

Something in the Heir attempts to come off as a historical romance romcom, but it just feels like it was missing something.

I’ve read a bunch of Suzanne Enoch‘s other historical romances and quite thoroughly enjoyed them, this book goes off in a different direction where humour is expected to play a higher part but comes off someone awkward at times and also different from her other books this is a closed door romance. I do not have a problem with closed or romances in general, but since the author usually does not go in that direction and the way the book was going didn’t feel like it should’ve been in that direction it felt off.

Overall this was a marriage of convenience between friends, where one friend DMMC is in love with the MFC. Due to familial inheritance rules in the MSC‘s family, she can only inherit her family home if she marries first among her cousins and can only keep the home if she produces a child within a certain time period. Hence, the marriage of convenience which seems beneficial to both, but she did not disclose the need for a child to her husband thus due to their lack of procreation, mostly on her part for not being interested in the act, she solve this problem by creating one in fiction. This aspect seemed pretty forced, but I did enjoy the part where they had to search out and find children to act as their fictional kids. I also really enjoyed the way the couple comes together to work towards this common goal of creating their fake family in order to save their home and the life they have together.

Lastly, what really save this book for me was the way the fictional family pulls them together in a way that they can see beyond what they have and what they can have if they just look out of the box and appreciate what is out there.

Overall, this is a definite switch from season Enochs traditional writing, but I think if you go into this book expecting something a little bit different it will be quite enjoyable.

DNF @ 26%

I'm sorry. But this is just not working out. It's getting unbearably ridiculous. This had the potential to be great. But it's a no for me.

This book was a bit of a disappointment for me. To begin with, I found it incredibly emotionally manipulative that the protagonists would take two orphans into their aristocratic household to assist in carrying out a scam. I have no objections to the moral aspects of scams; in this case, it was a necessary evil. However, the two children have grown up in abject poverty, so bringing them into a temporary arrangement in which their needs are met for the first time in their young lives is nothing short of cruel.

Yes, the protagonists plan to RETURN the children to the orphanage at the end of the scam. Obviously, if you know anything about storytelling, then it should not come as a surprise that the protagonists decide to adopt the scrappy orphans at the end of the book, but the children are certainly not aware that their fortunes are about to change, which is why they spend most of the book engaged in petty larceny—they are planning for a future in which they are plucked from the lap of luxury and returned to the orphanage.

There are also way too many points of view. It seemed like even the most minor of characters had a chapter that featured their point of view. Frankly, it was a distraction from the main narrative.

Speaking of which, although the protagonists have been married for 7-8 years, they have barely spent any time together for Various Reasons. No worries, I get it— what better opportunity for a second chance trope than needing to come together to participate in a scam? Unfortunately, the two protagonists still manage to avoid each other even though they are supposed to be working together to fool the heroine’s grandfather into believing that the orphans are their biological children. There is no reconnecting, no stolen moments, no second chance.

I have enjoyed Enoch’s romances in the past, but I had a hard time with this one.

I received a digital ARC of this book from St. Martin’s/NetGalley