The Lady and her Secret Lover by Jenn LeBlanc
On April 16, 2019 by Jaye
The Lady And Her Secret Lover by Jenn LeBlanc
🍸🍸🍸
Buy Links: Amazon | Barnes
NOTE: This book will be available on May 7, 2019
Blurb:
When
Ellie and Lou fall in love, it is with great abandon. And they have grand
ideas. A small cottage, a garden, a goat to manage the weeds, sheep for wool to
knit.
But the truth of the matter lies in the reality.
Louisa must marry, to the satisfaction of her father, and so must Ellie—whose
family hopes for a title to add legitimacy to their status, opening doors in
the ton. And when Louisa’s father discovers them together nothing can ever be
the same.
A friend rescues Louisa from a horrible fate,
sending her into hiding for her own protection. For three long years, Louisa
remains in exile out of fear of what her father could do.
Necessity returns Louisa to London, and as soon
as she does, the memories of her beautiful Ellie haunt her. But Louisa has no
idea if Ellie is even here, or unmarried, or still in want of her as Louisa is
and has been since that first moment she saw her across the shimmering
ballroom. Louisa fears discovering the truth of it all, that she was but a passing
fancy born of the excitement of the heat of a first season.
Will she find Ellie? Will the woman still want
her? And even if so, what can they do now that they couldn’t do before?
Nothing has changed, but everything is
different.
TW: sexual assault
Review:
I was excited to see this book available in NetGalley, so of course I picked it up just as soon as I could. There was a big kerfuffle recently in the RWA magazine about whether or not LGBTQ+ people (among others) should be allowed to have historical romance as defined by the industry due to “historical accuracy.” The description of this book summed up many of my responses to that particular assertion.
The thing is, I almost didn’t finish it. The language used through the book, particularly in the first half, is anachronistic and inconsistent. There’s a strong insta-love component that makes it difficult for me to suspend my disbelief, and the primary villain never seems to have a motivation. There’s a side character who suffers from a serious mental illness that seems to be a prior incarnation of River Tam, without the badassery, and I felt a little uncomfortable with that depiction of mental illness. While the story has a stated time period, I never saw the detail that made me feel it couldn’t have been set in 1675, or 1910. I try not to leave negative reviews of fiction, but I’d committed to leaving *a* review because of NetGalley. What was I to do?
Here’s the thing. All of the above issues are true, and they’re issues that I noticed in other reviews I saw. None of those things change the fact that I cried six times before I finished the book.
Yeah, six times. The heroine most harmed by the story turns out to have a heart six times the size I’d have expected at the intro, and is six times more creative too. Lou and Ellie go through some terrible times, Lou especially. Lou saves them all by devising a solution that is unique and reasonably plausible under the circumstances.
So, there are some issues with this book. If you’re a historical-romance purist, you probably won’t be able to get through it. That said, LeBlanc has crafted a damn fine story whose main characters are easy to become attached to and whose ultimate happy ending will bring tears of joy and triumph to your eyes.
Ad
Recent Comments