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Self-harm and frank discussions thereof, allusions to past family violence and abuse, dealing with the consequences of tremendous trauma.
This book is part of a series, but operates alongside another series, and they are very much connected. The first is ‘The Secret Scientists of London’ which focuses on women scientists working at Athena’s Retreat and the second, of which this is the second installment, is ‘Damsels of Discovery,’ which features women scientists not operating within Athena’s Retreat but nonetheless linked to it.
I have dipped in and out of both, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that I need to be a completionist because this series is just so damn good. Each book is stronger than the last one I read. While I have not struggled to follow the larger story and characters, I know it would be a more seamless, effortless, and enjoyable experience to start at the beginning and read them all in order.
Lady Phoebe Hunt has been exiled from England for her part in a man’s death. She’s spent the last four years in America working as a private investigator. At the start of the story, she returns to England to settle her father’s affairs so that her sister and mother are taken care of. Her father left a tremendous amount of debt behind that Phoebe needs to sort out. Phoebe was a founding member of Athena’s Retreat, a haven for women scientists. Her return to England is fraught with old friendships, old hurts, and family obligations.
Sam Fenley is an ambitious merchant who is looking for access to the aristocracy. While he is having a friendly fight with someone in his office, Phoebe walks in to place an advertisement in Sam’s papers about selling their family properties. From this chance meeting, their connection evolves a great deal, but initially they become acquainted because Sam offers to buy the properties from the Hunt family.
Phoebe is known for her cruel jibes, ice queen behaviour, and her rage. She has a traumatic history (see CW) and it’s made her defences a mile wide and high. If Phoebe exudes ice, then Sam exudes warmth. Yes, he is ambitious and angry about the social class structure in England, but he is also so quick to smile and laugh, even at himself. He’s clumsy but is no clown. He is charm personified.
As you can imagine, there is an absolutely spark-filled connection between these two. Sam fears Phoebe and admires her in equal measure. Phoebe is Formidable and Sam, being the only boy in a family of strong women, respects women and their autonomy and intellect. He approaches Phoebe with caution, patience and understanding. Phoebe responds with barbs that slowly morph into laughs instead.
Phoebe’s trauma is so impenetrable and so vividly written that when I was reading, I found it so easy to feel what she was feeling. The physical pain of slowly lowering defences, brick by brick. The fear of being hurt, of being vulnerable, exposed. It was an intense experience. I very nearly didn’t pick this book up because I knew self-harm was a feature and that’s a trigger for me. As it turns out it was the passages in which Phoebe made herself vulnerable that were harder for me to read.
TW/CW: additional info re: self harm portrayal
The self-harm is described fairly and openly in a frank conversation between the two. I have some distance now in my history of self-harm so it wasn’t as challenging for me. But those for whom it is more recent might struggle with this section.
For some of the book, Sam and Phoebe are at the family estate in Cumbria and there are definitely elements of a gothic novel in these sections. I won’t reveal them but needless to say, it got spooky (but mildly so – I’m a scaredy cat but I didn’t need to take breaks). The sex is hot and honest and raw and is the very epitome of sex functioning as a tool to further character development. Condoms are used and neither participant is by any means a virgin.
I have one gripe with what is an excellent book. It has to do with how the book ends. It is a HEA and both characters are very happy, but I had a question around the circumstances of their happiness. It felt rushed and not fully explored at the end there.
Spoilers for the ending
In a dramatic finale, Phoebe chooses to stay with Sam in England despite the Home Office wanting her in exile. She begins to regret this choice because she feels trapped in England but doesn’t say anything about it to Sam. Sam offers (with no prompting from Phoebe) that they live in the Americas.
This didn’t quite sit right with me because Phoebe has these new closer relationships with her family, and more importantly, Sam is deeply embedded in his family in London. He has a rich personal and professional life there. He leaves this behind for love – which is romantic, I guess, but with Sam’s happy family life being such a big feature of the book (in juxtaposition to Phoebe’s family life) it was strange that his leaving his family wasn’t discussed at all as part of that decision. He just proposes it without prior discussion, and it’s as unexpected as it is ill-fitting to his personal and professional life.
I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in feminist historical novels. While the ending left me with a few questions and was a bit unsatisfying as a result, the rest was delicious and absorbing. The whole series, in fact, is excellent (at least those that I’ve read). My new goal is to fill in my reading gaps in this series as a matter of urgency.