A bloody brilliant romance set in Edwardian-era London’s high society.
A proposal of convenience leads to love in Bobulski’s historical romance, the first in a series.
It’s June 1908, and the mothers of Miss Calliope Hart and Lord Edward Chase have one goal in mind: marrying off their children. Calliope, named “the debutante of the Season” back in her home of New York City, has been dragged across the pond to England under great protest. Her mother, tired of the judgment from American social circles for their “nouveau riche” status, strives to match Calliope with an aristocrat, thereby securing their family’s place in high society. Lord Edward Chase, the Earl of Hayward, has been in dire financial straits ever since his father unexpectedly died. His estate, Whitefawn, which supports and employs over 150 families, risks going under unless he can marry a wealthy heiress. An unfortunate first meeting (Edward bluntly states “I intend to marry you,” and Calliope, thinking it a cruel prank, responds, “I wouldn’t marry you if I were marched to the altar at gunpoint”) sours Calliope toward the earl, but Edward, captivated by her feistiness, remains undeterred. He makes her a deal: For one week, he will show Calliope all around London, and in exchange, she will spend a week at Whitefawn learning why the estate is worth saving. Calliope, who has yet to see the city, accepts and soon finds herself drawn to Edward in ways she didn’t anticipate. From the beginning, Bobulski renders the leads vividly, highlighting Calliope’s passion for history and Edward’s rediscovery of his adventurous spirit. Both characters, despite the transactional nature of their circumstances, are romantics at heart, and their budding attraction entertainingly leads the two into increasingly compromising situations. The supporting characters, including Edward’s ear trumpet–bearing Great-Uncle Aesop and his awkwardly shy cousin Tilly, are similarly well crafted, adding to a lively and richly textured world. Readers will be eager to read the next book in the series.
A bloody brilliant romance set in Edwardian-era London’s high society.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780764245251
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Haven
Review Posted Online: today
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.
A Seattle woman meets a Chicago businessman as she flies home from a visit to a friend, and her small act of kindness blossoms into more.
Maisy Gallagher is barely making ends meet. With her father’s unexpected death a few years earlier, she dropped out of nursing school to help out in the family’s jewelry store, working with her uncle. Her older brother, Sean, also moved back home so he and Maisy could help their mother and their 10-year-old brother, Patrick. When Maisy offers a ride to a rude businessman who sat next to her on the plane, she’s just operating on the kindness her grandmother instilled in her. That businessman, Chase Furst, turns out to be an incredibly wealthy banker; he’s flown into Seattle to make funeral arrangements for his mother, to whom he hasn’t spoken in years. Sparks fly in this gentle and predictable romance that leans heavily on long-distance and class-divide tropes. As with many of the author’s books, Christianity and the characters’ reliance on God’s will—as they wait and see what happens next—play a large part, as do traditional gender roles where women cook, clean, and only work in paying jobs until they have children at home to take care of. The author does offer a lighter touch when it comes to the painful ways alcoholism can destroy family relationships, with an understanding of the regret that can weigh on every family member.
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091676
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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