This guest review is by Catherine Heloise.

Previously, Catherine ranted about Shakespearean rockstars and loved Chase Me by Laura Florand. She has a food blog called Cate’s Cates, where she creates allergy-friendly treats, and she also runs the Stories Under Paris website, where she creates fictional stories based on the names of Paris Metro stations. How cool is that?

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This novella gets an A for all the fun.

Courtney Milan’s new novella, Mrs Martin’s Incomparable Adventure, is a delight. It is funny, sweet, subversive, feminist, and angry, and very cathartic to read, especially if one has ever been female on the internet (or, for that matter, in public).

What it is not, is subtle. As Milan says in her author’s note:

Sometimes I write villains who are subtle and nuanced. This is not one of those times. The Terrible Nephew is terrible, and terrible things happen to him because he deserves them. Sometime villains really are bad and wrong, and sometimes, we want them to suffer a lot of consequences.

Yes, yes we do. This story is enormous fun and I devoured it in about an hour, before going back to savour it more slowly.

Readers of Courtney Milan will remember Mrs Martin from her appearance in ‘After the Wedding’, where she stole every scene she was in. Bertrice Martin is a wealthy widow in her prime (her prime being seventy-three), with no time for fools, politeness, or men. Alas, she is afflicted with a Terrible Nephew, who must always be referred to as such. (Well, as to that, she is willing to compromise, and call him ‘Mr Cappish, a despicable bag of diseased meat’, but he does not view this as an improvement.)

Unfortunately for Mrs Martin, it is the Terrible Nephew who will inherit all of her money if she doesn’t do something about it, or him. And she has fallen into depression after the loss of her three closest friends, including her companion and lover, Ellie. Nothing really tastes of anything, and she has taken to having afternoon naps, for want of anything better to do.

Miss Violetta Beauchamps, on the other hand, is neither wealthy, nor a widow. She has to have time for men, fools, and politeness, because when you are poor, you don’t have a lot of choice about who you deal with or how you deal with them. She is sixty-nine years old, and while she is not destitute, she has been counting on the pension she was to receive when she turned seventy. When her employer sacks her just a few months short of this occasion, on the pretext that Mr Cappish hasn’t been paying his rent for the lodgings she manages, she decides to break with a lifetime of following the rules to swindle Mrs Martin by pretending to be The Terrible Nephew’s landlord and asking for money.

Naturally, this is not how things go, and Violetta finds herself drawn into a quest to ensure that The Terrible Nephew gets what he deserves. Picture two gleeful Furies, armed with a terrible choir, assorted livestock, and toasted cheese sandwiches.

The heroines’ quest to make The Terrible Nephew as uncomfortable as possible is pretty delightful, but there is more to their story. One advantage of having heroines who are no longer young is that they do both have a pretty good idea of who they are, and neither woman deals in self-deception. It can be difficult to make a romance work in the length given by a novella, but it certainly helps if both parties are inclined to be honest with themselves and others. Another of the things that Bertrice has no time for is circumlocution or euphemisms. This makes communication far more efficient, though humans being humans, it doesn’t completely avoid the risk of misunderstandings.

“If you’re trying to be polite and you want me out of your hair, do just say so,” Bertrice interrupted. “These circumlocutions wherein one claims one thing and means another have never made much sense to me. Say what you mean! Indirectness is not my strong point.”

“Is that so?” Miss Beauchamps murmured. “How nice to have my suspicions confirmed.”

“I like it here,” Bertrice told her. “It’s cozy.”

“No, it’s–“ Miss Beauchamps looked at her for a moment, before smiling brightly. “Never mind. For a second I thought you were just being polite.”

“And then you realized how ridiculous that sounded.”

At first glance, Bertrice is direct and fearless, and one of the delights of the earlier part of the book is seeing this begin to rub off on Violetta, who has a nice line in quiet sarcasm when she allows herself to indulge it. But perhaps even more delightful is the realisation that Bertrice needs Violetta as much as Violetta needs her. There is quite a bit of fear underneath Bertrice’s deliciously vengeful exterior – her abrasiveness is a form of bravado and of self-protection – and having Violetta as her friend, partner in crime, and eventually her lover does not soften her, but instead permits that fierceness and certainty to become real all the way down.

This is a Courtney Milan novella, so there are always other things going on beneath the surface. There are several explorations of the nature of power and privilege, of what gives one person power over another, or, indeed, power over themselves and their own lives. Gender, money, and social status all play roles here, and the question of whether Bertrice’s wealth will be sufficient to counteract the power that The Terrible Nephew exerts simply by existing as an upper-class man in a late Victorian world is the tension that overhangs much of the story.

Age – and especially age in women – is also explored here, and there is a rather wrenching scene where Violette confronts the fact that while the marks of age and a difficult life are seen as picturesque in a tree or a ruined building, they are considered entirely ugly when applied to an elderly woman. And yet it is clear that Violette and Bertrice find beauty each in the other, and Milan ensures that we see it too.

I started this book expecting to love it. I mean, it’s Courtney Milan, and it was Mrs Martin, and also, the romance world is not exactly overflowing with elderly lesbian heroines. As we are being reminded once again, diversity is not something the genre can be relied upon to do well or recognise, and while I’ve read quite a few (not enough) romances with Black or Asian heroes or heroines, or heroines with disabilities, or heroines of size, I have not read nearly as many with a heroine over the age of fifty, let alone over seventy. For all the body types we are willing to celebrate, age is rarely allowed to be seen as sexy.

But it is here.

This is a novella that masquerades as a cheerful, vengeful romp, as a sweet, sort-of second-chance love story between two women. And honestly, it is enormously satisfying on this level, and it is laugh-out-loud funny, even on a second or third reading. I am 100% here for furious, funny, sweet romance between two women of a certain age taking choir-enhanced vengeance on those who deserve it. But there is a lot going on beneath the surface, and in that respect, the story bears a strong resemblance to its heroines.