This HaBO request is from L., who is looking for a particular historical romance:
This was the first Regency romance I’d ever read and one of the first romances I read as well. It’s been living in my head rent free ever since. I don’t know the title or author.
The things I remember clearly about it are the hero is super into fly fishing and is the heroine’s neighbor, though they haven’t met before the book starts. She’s into drawing detailed pictures of nature, possibly insects in particular. Her father was also into fly fishing before he died and so she knows a lot about it. She ends up helping him make better lures for fly fishing.
Also at the very beginning of the book they meet on the river and the meeting somehow leads to him making out with her ear. I think (but could be wrong) there was also a plot moppet, but I cant remember his connection to the leads. I also think the main plot involved a bunch of suitors coming out to the country to hopefully marry her for her wealth.
Someone knows this one.
I’m afraid I don’t know this book but I would really love a list of historicals featuring women scientists. I just listened to Stuff You Missed in History Class’s episode on Maria Sibylla Merian, who was a pioneering entomologist and brilliant illustrator of the 17th century.
So I think I need to read this book whenever we find out what it is.
This is driving me crazy. It’s ringing a bell, but I can’t find it. And I can’t tell if it’s ringing a bell because I read this book, or because I read the Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson, which has a fascinating dive into Victorian fly fishing lures, among other things (including colonialism, conservation, the legacy of colonialism in natural history museums, and obsessions in niche hobbies). Although, fair warning, after reading it, I always wince whenever hats in historicals have feathers.
I feel like I haven’t read this, but I’ve seen the title somewhere is one of my many trawls through the internet looking at historical regencies. There are actually used to be a website that had a very extensive list of regencies grouped by author and theme and there were a couple under “sports theme” that had fishing.
Does anyone else remember the website? I want to say it was called “Beau Monde” or “Nonesuch” or some very regency cant expression, but those don’t seem quite right and don’t bring up anything when I google. The layout was very basic (maybe with a pink or light purple background), but the info was very extensive. It felt very “Internet 1.0.” Sorry to throw another HABO on top of a HABO, but if it still exists, I bet you can find the answer there.
Omg omg I think I just solved my first HABO!!! “ Lady Lissa’s Liaison”. Description from review: “ The Hero is a man of black reputation, but really a good guy in disguise who bought the neighboring manor to get away from society. The heroine is an independent young heiress who finds herself inundated with fortune hunters after her mourning period for her father is finished. They meet up at the river that divides their properties and the H/h bond over fishing. Even though they have a rocky beginning, they find themselves attracted to each other despite the fact that they didn’t want to be and both say they don’t want marriage.”
I searched and went down the interwebs rabbit hole, and ran across a book and author I’m not familiar with: Lady Lissa’s Liaison by Lindsay Randall. It seems to have all the elements of this HABO? The author has a post on her website about the fly-fishing inspiration: https://www.lindsayrandall.com/a-story-behind-the-story-for-lady-lissas-liaison.html
Jill Q: that site has faded into internet history, alas, but can still be found in the wayback machine at archive.org. It was http://www.thenonesuch.com/ if you want to browse through it on wayback.
@WS, thank you! I thought I had dreamed it!
@GradStudentEscapist, so glad you found it. Yay!
I think there’s an older Eloisa James with a secondary romance involving a fly fisher. Had no idea that there’d be two Regency fly fishing romances.
Has this been solved by @GradstudentEscapist? If not I want to throw one out there. Sweet Bargain by Kate Moore. It centers very heavily on fishing and the stream the heroine and her family use that is on the neighbors property. This causes a conflict and the hero is very shy and uncertain in social situations so bungles how he handles it. Just wanted to suggest it. Here is the blurb.
Poor Bel Shaw. Her carefree days of family fun and fishing must come to an end. It is her duty to assure the future prosperity of her large and close-knit family by making a good marriage. To add to her gloom, she is chased from her favorite spot on the river by the handsome and high-handed Nicholas Seymour, who apparently thinks he can buy the beautiful Bel Shaw as well as property. The outrageous bargain he proposes is a dozen kisses for the fish the Shaws have “stolen” from his land.
@Courtney M – I know exactly what you mean about wincing now when historicals have feathers. I love the series, “The Gilded Age,” but boy howdy, there are a lot of feathers!