LADIES IN HATING (Belvoir's Library #3), charming sapphic Regency romance

LADIES IN HATING (Belvoir's Library #3)
ALEXANDRA VASTI
St. Martin's Griffin (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A pair of Gothic novelists trade rivalry for love in this swoony, steamy, sapphic Regency by USA Today bestselling author Alexandra Vasti.

Celebrated authoress Lady Georgiana Cleeve has achieved fame and fortune. Unfortunately, she’s also acquired an enemy: the enigmatic Lady Darling, whose spine-tingling plots appear to be pulled straight from Georgiana’s own manuscripts. What’s a stubborn, steely writer to do? Unmask her rival, of course.

But unmasking doesn’t go according to plan—because Lady Darling is actually Cat Lacey, the butler’s daughter and object of Georgiana’s very secret, very embarrassing teenage infatuation.

Cat Lacey has spent a decade clawing her family out of poverty. The last thing she needs is to be distracted by the stunning(ly pretentious) Lady Georgiana Cleeve. But Cat can’t seem to escape her infuriatingly beautiful rival—including at the eerie manor where they both plan to set their next books. The plot unexpectedly thickens, however, when the novelists find themselves trapped in the manor together. In between ghostly moans and spectral staff, Cat and Georgiana come face-to-face with real danger: the scorching passion that’s been haunting their rivalry all along.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Anyone need an enemies-to-lovers sapphic romance? This one will fill the need with verve and enthusiasm. I'm pretty sure the fact that the enemies are both lady novelists in Regency England is the biggest fantasy leap in the book. I suspect the family dynamic, the class dynamics, while all massaged for our twenty-first century sensibilities really did occur in some form. In reality, families usually find a way to heal where there was a solid foundation of love underpinning them.

As the third of a trilogy I've not read the first two of, I expected to be at sea. I was not. I assume that's down to the nature of romances, but it could easily be the author's real intent to make this a standalone that might convince one to go back and pick up the first two. (They're cishet so that's a firm no from me.) It did lend the story a richer background in that I felt I was coming into the action where everyone knew everyone else and I needed to figure that web of relationship out. I'm okay with that. If you are not, I'll reassure you that the author was careful to supply the kind of details that an experienced reader puts together readily. The picture created is a rich tapestry of emotional relationships that felt very realistic.

Immersed in this story was a very agreeable place to be in a news cycle so filled with horrifying and unnervingly personal murders. I live in the same world as some people with guns who hate me across multiple identity axes. It pays to put your mind into a better place, one where conflict exists but is not going to lead to lethal outcomes but resolutions and HEAs for its lovely people. I'm sure any of my QUILTBAG siblings could find comfort in this story of two of our forebears finding love and healing generational wounds. It should only happen for all of us in this vale of tears.