“Having regrets is the only sign that you’ve done anything interesting with your life.”

This was a cute and slightly aggravating historical romance with a promising cast of characters that make me excited to read the next books!

⇢The Plot
So, I liked how this book started, from the prologue to the pact made by the Wallflowers, to Annabelle’s sickness. But when she and Simon got married, things just became… eh.

As historical romance readers know, in these books, marriage ≠ the end of the book because marriage is often just a plot device and doesn’t even mean that the characters care for each other. In fact, they might completely despise one another. But like… did I really feel like reading a good 25% of this book after the characters got married just to wait for them to wake out of their stupors and decide that they were in love? Not particularly.

And on the topic of weird plotlines, what was that whole almost-murder thing?? I mean, I guess it sort of made sense but it just seemed like it was randomly included to make the book longer. And same with the fire... I guess it was necessary but I was just caught off guard by it.

But for all that complaining, this book was still really enjoyable. The romance was sweet and overall I was definitely entertained. And the healing-while-sick trope part was great.

⇢Annabelle
Annabelle was a good protagonist. It was easy to root for her and empathize with her. I doubt that by the end of this series she’ll be my favourite of the leading ladies because there was nothing that really stood out to me about her either, but no complaints. But I do want to say, I CAN’T WAIT FOR THE OTHER GIRLS’ BOOKS. Let’s just say the foreshadowing was great.

"How sweet," Annabelle mumbled sickly, her eyes closed. "Every woman dreams of being told that she's preferable to a dead cow.”

⇢Simon
From the reviews this book has, I can see that a lot of people called Simon sweet... I just don’t see it. I mean, perseverant…passionate…nice or kind I guess. But most of the time I felt like him being nice was for his own sake? Or it didn’t last long. Anyhow, that’s definitely not the first word I would use. And I’m sorry, I just don’t get why so many people are obsessed with him. Did I miss something??

I think the part of his character that I liked the most was that he wasn’t born into his wealth. That offered a unique glimpse into the side of London that rarely appears in these books, and definitely made him stand out from most of the other love-interests I’ve seen in regency/victorian books.

The fact that not much really stood out to me about either Annabelle or Simon isn’t surprising because I feel like the first couple in these kinds of series is always the baseline and then the more fun or unique pairings come later, so on that note, I’m actually really looking forward to the next book because I am confident that Lillian won’t let me down.

⇢Annabelle and Simon

I liked these two as a couple, but I feel like some of the conflict surrounding why they didn’t get together earlier was pointless. You may or may not know, but in historical romances there are women who are considered “marrying material” and then those who aren’t. In this case, Annabelle wasn’t, because she didn’t have a dowry.

So basically a huge part of this book was her needing to get married to pay for stuff, but not wanting to become a mistress to do so. I mean, that’s reasonable. But you’d assume that therefore the conflict was the fact that Simon i don’t know, couldn’t marry her without risking looking bad or something. But no. In the end, the fact that she was not marrying material didn’t really affect anything because he decided he would be fine marrying her so quickly. So then, why did he let her freak out about finding a husband for SO LONG?? If you knew that marriage wasn’t off the table, why act the opposite way?!? Rant over, but I hope my point made sense.

Also, if you’re wondering why I can’t seem to stop reading historical fiction series despite always seeming to have issues with them, (mostly relating to how uninformed, innocent and mistreated the female characters are because y’know, it’s the 1800s), I can’t tell you either. I guess I’m just looking for that one gem that usually hides in the middle of the series and makes it on to my favourites list.

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