Rating: 4 stars
Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own.
Lady Georgiana Cleeve was disowned by her father when she announced that she was the author of several popular novels, and has lived alone with her mother ever since, cut off from all contact with her brothers, convinced that the scandal she brought on herself and her family would irrevocably tarnish the reputations of anyone connected to her. She is selling well and her books are popular, but for the last few years, she has noticed a number of worrying similarities between her own books and those of another lady novelist, who also writes Gothic romances. Could the preposterously named Lady Darling be plagiarising Georgina? And if so, how is she getting her information?
Georgina becomes obsessed with unmasking this mysterious rival, and eventually resorts to hiding in the bushes outside Belvoir Library, which distributes for both of them. She is shocked to discover that not only is Lady Darling someone she recognises, but someone she shares a past with. Catriona Rose Lacey is the daughter of a butler who worked for Georgina's family, but was suddenly fired and banished from the estate by Georgina's imperious father. She hasn't seen Catriona for over a decade, but seeing her again reawakens feelings that Georgina had almost forgotten existed.
When confronted by the furious Georgina, Catriona fervently denies all her claims of plagiarism. While she read some of Georgina's early novels, she's been so busy writing and building her own career for the past few years that she's not had time to read anything at all. Cat writes to support herself, her cousin and her teenage brother, who now has a position as a clerk. For many years, after her father died, it was only the money Cat could bring in, from her writing and working in a pie shop, that kept the family from starving. Unlike what Georgina fears, Cat doesn't really hold a grudge against Georgina's father for firing her father and sending them packing, but that obviously takes some time to be revealed.
Since this is a romance, obviously, the two women can't stop thinking of each other, even when they are annoyed and consider the other a rival. Despite their attempts to avoid each other, they keep being thrown together, and once they end up literally trapped together in a crumbling Gothic mansion, which may or may not be actually haunted, their forced proximity leads to them eventually going from mutual pining to actually snogging (and eventually more).
Cat and her family are worried that she's going to get her heart broken, mostly because of the big class difference between the two women. They aren't aware that Lady Georgina was cut off entirely by her father, and even after his death, has refused to contact her brothers for fear that they will reject her. Because of her father's treatment of her, she's convinced that she will lead anyone close to her to be tarnished by her scandal and ostracised by society, so she keeps herself entirely isolated, which, of course, is very destructive in the long run.
This is a fairly slow-burn romance, and there is a fair amount of angst from Georgina, which keeps her from being able to fully open up to Cat or accept affection from anyone. There's a lot of fun shenanigans in the dilapidated mansion they spend a bunch of time in, and it's never entirely clear whether the place is actually haunted, or whether this is more the vivid imagination of the two women.
This is the third and final novel in the Belvoir's Library series, but it works fine as a stand-alone novel. You don't need to have read any of the previous two, but for the curious, it's fun to see Lady Georgina as a supporting character in Ne'er Duke Well (where she avoids marriage proposals by pretending to be the most vacuous of airheads) and in Earl Crush, where she is a very supportive and entertaining friend to the heroine. She was a great supporting character in both of these previous novels, which is why I'm glad she got a romance of her own. It seems that Iris, another supporting character in these novels, is going to be denied her happy ending, since Ms. Vasti didn't get to continue the series to a fourth book. I am nevertheless very excited to see what she writes next.
Judging a book by its cover: While I'm not exactly super fond of the various shades of pink of the cover, the cover image shows a fun and rather dramatic scene in the novel (where our two heroines are trying to escape the Gothic ruins they find themselves trapped in). I especially like the inclusion of Georgina's fluffy dog, (Francis) Bacon, in all his derpy glory.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
No comments:
Post a Comment