Thumbs up for The Belle of Belgrave Square by Mimi Matthews. Historical romance.
The ostensible one-line description: A young lady with severe social anxiety and a military hero with a secret enter into a marriage of convenience. The thing is, though, this book is not just better than most other historical romances, it is better than most other books regardless of genre. How…does Matthews do this? Everything is perfect: character, plot, theme (in this case, the power of reading fiction for mental health), historical detail, it’s sexier than most books with on-page sex, and it is genuinely awwww-inspiring romantic in a way that even most romances fail at. Astonishing. If you’ve never read a historical romance, start here (and then suffer because you’ve started at the top).
For a lady prone to panicking in company, mortifications were a daily occurrence. At the advanced age of two-and-twenty, she’d nearly grown accustomed to them. But even for her, the incident at Lady Arundell’s ball had marked a new low.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it!