When her father dies, Cordelia Brownlow’s future looks bleak. She has no money and must sell Ashworth, the family house, in order to pay the debts of honor that her father ran up. The offer her cousin, Lady Dennyson, makes to buy Ashworth and keep Cordelia on as a companion seems like the answer to her prayers. But Lady Juliet Dennyson has an unusual idea of the duties (and pleasures) of a ‘companion’, and Cordelia finds herself falling in love with the lady who shows her delights of the body she’s never imagined. Lady Juliet has secrets in her past and they threaten to spill over into the present, destroying her relationship with Cordelia. Can Lady Juliet learn to live with her past – and can Cordelia accept it, too?
A little bit ago, I was introduced to the M/M Reg Rom, so curious, I set out to find a W/W one. Surprisingly, I could only find one (please correct me in the comments if I am wrong!) available; Loving My Lady was literally it.
Its a short book, and jarringly told in the first person. I have read a few other Regencies in first person, including a couple from Joan Smith, and honestly it snaps me right out the story. I have tried to overcome it, but honestly part of the ease of reading the same genre is that it has certain conventions that make the experience familiar enough to grease the reading spokes, so to speak.
There isn’t much in the way of intimate scenes, so its fairly clean, and there is some nice tension, but I actually found a lot of the character interaction kind of confusing and frankly pretty gothic. For instance, I didn’t get why the Heroine, who we are made to believe desperately loved her husband, is suddenly down to seduce the heroine. I get the sense that Cordelia is a bit mousy and not a super hottie, or vibrant, or alluring. What makes her attractive to the Heroine? I am still not sure. I get that Cordelia is definitely in love with the Heroine, Juliet, but Juliet kind of jerks her around, treats her like a servant, and acts more like an abuser than a lover.
I think there was something here, and it actually tends more towards literature that Reg Rom. My humble opinion is that Friday isn’t a devotee to the genre and more of dabbler. In that respect, I was naturally disappointed by the read. I don’t think that makes it by any stretch a bad book…just not my cuppa. The rating below reflects just that–this isn’t recommended for Reg readers.
2.5 out of 6 W/W short told in first person with gothic overtones
| Content Rating/Heat Index | |
|---|---|
| Mature Content |   |
| Suggestive content | |
| Intimacy | |
| Some after the fact descriptions, but not detailed or graphic | |
| Violence | |
| Not really | |
| Overall | |
|---|---|
| Probably not appropriate for most preferring a cleaner reader. | |
