RogerBW's Blog

The Lily of Ludgate Hill, Mimi Matthews 31 October 2024

2024 Victorian romance. Anne Deveril has been letting herself fade into obscurity looking after her widowed mother. Mr Felix Hartford is apparently a feckless man-about-town. They were almost married six years ago, and they've spend the intervening time despising each other…

There are many side matters going on in Felix's life, and to go into detail would be spoilerish, but several secrets that seem as though they would lead to severe embarrassment are eventually made public and the consequences don't seem too terrible—which didn't entirely convince me. This is the Victorian age shortly after the death of Albert, after all, where the veneer of correct behaviour can be so thin that any reminder of the true state of affairs is a grave offence.

Meanwhile Anne's situation is precarious, as her cousin the actual heir reaches his majority and threatens to displace Anne and her mother from the family house in Mayfair—hence the title.

There's more linking between books of a series that I usually expect in romance, and it's rather pleasing: not only is Anne's reason for contacting Felix again related to the dash to rescue her friend Julia from her potential ogre of a husband in The Belle of Belgrave Square, but several characters return from Matthews' earlier Parish Orphans of Devon series, including the love interest for the fourth of this quartet of friends (though of course that won't be resolved until the final book in this set).

There isn't perhaps the usual driving force of a specific goal to be attained by a particular point or All Will Be Lost; rather, much of what's going on is Anne gradually emerging from her grief for her father.

But mostly this follows the standard second-chance pattern, with the usual good writing from Matthews as the protagonists annoy each other even when they sometimes weren't intending to, and they each have to consider changes to their way of life in order to accommodate the other. The course of events is broadly predictable from the first chapter, but I don't read a romance for surprises; rather, I'm here for the interesting detail that makes this specific second-chance story for these particular people distinct from any other.

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Previous in series: The Belle of Belgrave Square | Series: Belles of London

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