Review - - Manic Pixie Dream Earl

Manic Pixie Dream Earl

by Jenny Holiday

Earls Trip - Book 2

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: May 27, 2025

Reviewed by PJ

When not writing, poet Edward Astley, Viscount Featherfinch, spends his time fending off the young ladies of the ton—and some of its young men—and avoiding his cruel father. As heir to the earldom, Edward knows he must marry someday. Alas, he is already hopelessly in love with someone. Hopeless because not only is Miss Julianna Evans not a member of the aristocracy, she is employed. She is a magazine editor—the only one to publish his work. Also, in all their years of increasingly personal correspondence, they’ve never met.

Also, she thinks he’s a woman. Named Euphemia.

Julianna is baffled. How can her soul mate not want to meet? Could it be that Euphemia is not the simple country girl she claims to be? Perhaps she’s wealthy. After all, she’s never cashed any of the bank drafts Julianna has sent. Perhaps Euphemia simply doesn’t want rank to come between them. Well, no more. Having extracted the details of a trip Euphemia is planning, Julianna squanders her meager savings and surprises her at the scene.

He is very, very surprised. As is she.

Now the two will have to decide what is true, what is not, and whether the truest thing of all—love—just might be worth an earldom . . .

PJ's Thoughts:

Jenny Holiday took me on another entertaining and surprising journey with book two of her Earls Trip series. I expected a rom-com, bromance, mistaken identity romp and there are parts that fit that description but it's also so much more. 

First, I love the long-time friendship among the three earls in this series and especially how they all accept and support one another for exactly who they are. In Effie's case, that's a sweet, somewhat naive, fashion-loving, poetry-writing, nightmare-plagued man with some deep emotional baggage. He's also a man who has no experience with sexual desire, needing a close emotional relationship first (in today's world, he would be called a demisexual), but all that's about to change in a wholly Effie way.

Julianna, Effie's editor and letter friend, is the object of this new desire. A businesswoman, she's ten years older, sexually experienced (with a woman and a man), and wholeheartedly against marriage (just what's in it for a woman, anyway?). On paper, they seem the most ill-conceived couple ever but in real life the feelings that these two share are deep, endearing, and under a time constraint. What happens in Brighton should definitely stay in Brighton, right? Maybe not.  

There seems to be no way this cross-class romance will work (and truthfully, I had no idea how it would). Jules and Effie have opened their hearts and thoughts to one another through their many letters before they ever meet in person. They are well balanced, each having something to teach the other. Their time together is tender, funny, eye-opening, and endearing. Their parting is heartbreaking, but necessary for the growth that follows. Their happy ending is unconventional but oh, so perfect for the two of them. I didn't see the twist coming that made it possible but it absolutely works. 

I'm already looking forward to discovering what Holiday has planned for serious Simon in the next Earl's Trip novel and, of course, catching up with my favorite characters from books one and two. If you're looking for something a little different that will touch your heart, give Manic Pixie Dream Earl a try. I also recommend book one, Earls Trip.