This is my first Bad Decisions Book Club of 2025. Sleep became a distant memory with this book. For context, I have a newborn. I had the opportunity to sleep, but chose not to because this book was much more important. It is also the start of a series and it’s a series I’m now very excited about!

Euphemia Flite was raised in a school for girls on the outskirts of Victorian London. Her origins are unknown to her and the headmistress of the school is quite a cold woman. She is, however, a cold woman with a mission: upend the patriarchy (WOOHOO!).

After a period working as a companion to a lady in Paris, Effie is summoned back to the school for an important mission. If she can achieve her goal, the headmistress will settle a good sum on Effie and she’ll be independent and free. This is a strong incentive for a woman who is quite desperate for a place to call her own.

The mission puts her at cross purposes with Gabriel Royce. He started in the slums of St Giles and rose up through some kindness and a lot of hard work to become a community pillar, albeit one that runs a betting shop. He spends money on himself but his mission is to improve the lives of those in St Giles before it is completely cleared away by the British government.

The central figure in this battle is a viscount who is respectable, wealthy and a total asshole. Gabriel needs him to maintain power so that Gabriel’s betting shop is protected from the authorities. Effie needs to bring the viscount down in order to set herself free. For Effie to succeed, Gabriel must fail and vice versa.

A pet hate is when the barrier to a couple being together can be solved with something as simple as a conversation. This conflict is not easily solved. In fact, there was a TINY hint about a possible solution but it was well hidden and I only realised it was a hint once the resolution happened at the end of the book. Gabriel and Effie’s attraction (and love) for each other grows inexorably just as a solution for this this barrier becomes more and more pressing. The tension was phenomenal! I was gripped!

As with most romances that end up in the A category for me, these two had to learn to be vulnerable with each other. Neither is particularly keen on ‘letting people in’ but from the start there is a spark between these two that demands more of them than superficial interactions. Slowly they reveal their soft undersides to each other. It’s hesitant and tentative and delightful to read. It’s not all tenderness though. There are sparks and disagreements and sizzling chemistry. Neither backs down no matter how formidable their ‘opponent’ is. (While there is chemistry, kissing is as explicit as it gets.)

As an aside, the nickname for Effie’s school is the Crinoline Academy. These wire-hoop underskirts are multipurpose, my favourite of which is that they enforce women’s personal space and, in fact, encourage them to take up the space around them. The book is littered with little feminist tidbits like that, my favourite of which is in the ending, which I won’t spoil.

For a romance, there are a lot of secondary characters. Some of them are pretty flat and serve only as insights into our main characters’ personalities. But some of them are more nuanced and the next couple in the series are a serious newspaperman and a teacher with a limp who is determined to be a teacher at the Crinoline Academy forever. They both show plenty of personality in this book (including, but not limited to, courage, determination and a love for justice) so I will definitely be reading book two in this series.

If you too would like to join the Bad Decisions Book Club and immerse yourself in a tale of vulnerability and courage, with excellent dialogue, emotional depth, and very clever characters, then this is the book for you.

Source link