Usually when I fall in love with a book, I devour it in one giant gulp and at one sitting, and only come back to savour it on a second reading. So Book of Love was unusual for me, in that I loved it, but also kept putting it down because I wanted to make it last longer. The quality of the writing and the sweetness not just of the central relationship, but of the friendships that surrounded the hero and heroine, really drew me in and seduced me.

Cordelia is clever, outspoken and principled. She takes the world very seriously, because she has to. Though she was born to the gentry class, she is estranged from her family and makes a precarious living in London, binding beautiful editions of books for those wealthy enough to afford them. While she enjoys her work, and has close and supportive friends who enrich her leisure time, she has very little financial margin, and cannot afford to offend or lose a potential client. She views marriage as a roulette wheel which few men and fewer women can win, and she does not choose to gamble.

Alistair, Duke of Stroud is Cordelia’s opposite in every way. He is a wealthy duke, and a giant of a man, and would probably be an object of both awe and fear if it weren’t for the fact that he constantly plays the clown. He is sunny and friendly and kind and plays elaborate pranks at every opportunity, ensuring that nobody takes him seriously. He has been told all his life that he is stupid and has learned to believe it. And since he is incapable of doing anything really meaningful, what else should he do with his life other than amuse people and occasionally help a friend?

“I’m not a very good duke.”

He tried not to mind when she snickered.

“You must think I haven’t noticed—you and everyone else—because people are always trying to tell me, as though I had no idea. Well, I know. I’m not a good duke. But when a friend needs something and I can provide it, for a little while I feel like I’m exactly where I ought to be.”

Obviously, he is attracted to Cordelia almost at first sight. And by the time she has taken him to task for his (inadvertently terrifying and stalkerish) behaviour and turned his frivolity back on him, he is madly in love with her.

“I rebuffed your attempts to make conversation.” Cordelia seethed. “I declined to answer your inappropriate questions. I refused to tell you my name.”

“You did,” he breathed, eyes wide.

“I will not play your game,” Cordelia finished. “I’ve no room in my life for presumptuous men who trample over my wishes for their own amusement.”

Cordelia initially has a low opinion of Alistair, but she doesn’t think he is unintelligent – that would be far more forgivable. She sees a man who is wasting resources and opportunities that she cannot even dream about having:

It seemed to her that anyone with the capacity to execute a good prank also had a responsibility to put their abilities to some better use.

I suspect a good part of Alistair’s immediate attraction to Cordelia is that she doesn’t treat him like an endearing fool. She treats him like a man who is intelligent enough to know better.

I liked Alistair far more than I expected to. He is so very unaware of his own worth. He really believes that his wealth is all he has to offer, and that he has no brains to speak of, and I could see how that would lead him not to attempt anything serious. It seems odd to describe someone with so much charm and social power as Alistair as being insecure and lacking confidence, and yet this is absolutely the case.

He does have moments of great wit, however:

“How can it be that so many people are delightful as individuals, and yet almost all families are appalling when assembled as a unit?”

Oh, Alistair. I, too, have attended that family Easter gathering.

I was also charmed by how delighted he was to be outwitted, even embarrassed, by Cordelia, and how rather than being angry he responded by telling her ‘you have my utmost respect’.

Alistair’s emotional intelligence is considerable, and he reads others very well. I loved the way he recognises Cordelia’s fears, and just quietly shapes himself and the circumstances to accommodate her. He never addresses them directly, or requires her to confess them herself. He just makes sure she has what she needs in order not to be afraid. And while he may not have the confidence to change the world himself, he is absolutely ready to stand at Cordelia’s side – or even behind her – while she changes it.

Cordelia has the kind of independence that comes from knowing that she cannot rely on anyone else to catch her if she falls. She has no time for play, and cannot afford to be anything less than strong. She has been let down so thoroughly by her family that she will not put herself into a position where anyone else has power over her again.

And yet, she is far less alone than she realises, even before Alistair enters the picture. She has socially powerful friends and clients who would help if she asked. And Alistair’s friends are also protective of Cordelia – not, perhaps, because they know her and love her as her friends do, but because they recognise the power disparity between her and Alistair, and don’t want to see a young woman hurt due to their friend’s carelessness. On a first reading, I was touched by this for Cordelia’s sake; on a second reading, I felt a little sad for Alistair. Even the people closest to him expect so little from him.

The writing in this story is absolutely beautiful and sensual. Everything the characters saw or heard or felt seemed to leap from the page in full colour. In particular, I found the descriptions of Cordelia’s profession almost intoxicatingly vivid. She is a bookbinder, but her profession is far more than that – she makes an art of creating personalised editions of books:

She’d learned to bind books as a hobby, freely experimenting with new materials and techniques instead of conforming to any established tradition. She’d read every single book that she bound. She thought of her bindings as a response to the text, a cross between a review and a tribute.

And then there is the technical detail, which I could honestly have read about for days. I loved the descriptions of the illustrations and of the marbling, and of the practical minutiae of binding books, from how the pages are folded and cut to deciding how to create a matched set of blank books for diaries:

The fundamentals of bookbinding resulted in finished volumes whose total number of pages divided cleanly by four. Always, every time. The average year had three hundred and sixty-five days. 1856, being a leap year, had three hundred sixty-six. She had to divide those days into portions that felt seasonally appropriate, formed a matching set, and, as a matter of professional pride, avoid left over blank pages along the way…

In short, this story takes book porn to a level that I did not know existed. Be prepared to swoon.

The cast of this story is pleasingly diverse. Cordelia’s circle of friends consists of Ruby, her flatmate and landlady, who is half Indian and writes mystery novels under a male pen-name; Olympia, a spoiled and eccentric heiress; and Tess, who is from Africa and was orphaned and kidnapped at an early age, before being gifted to Queen Victoria and raised as her God-daughter. All four women sit at uncomfortable intersections of privilege and prejudice of different kinds, and if they are sequel bait, then I have been caught, hook line and sinker, because I *really* wanted to know more about their lives and their thoughts.

The story does contain some more serious, and even dark, elements. One secondary character enters a relationship during the course of the book that appears abusive, and other characters spend time grappling with how to support their friend without alienating her.

There is also a fascinating storyline centering around a petition to improve the lot of married women, and a related, but rival, Bill allowing for women to initiate divorce proceedings. The machinations around these two political causes, while historically accurate, felt strikingly contemporary in the ways they played out, in particular, the tension between idealism and pragmatism.

Book of Love is a satisfyingly dense book, beautifully written, with a deeply touching and loving central relationship, but it does have a rather bittersweet ending. While I loved the way Cordelia and Alistair were able to make each other whole, the end of the book left me feeling a little melancholy. If you enjoy a thoughtful romance that touches on politics and feminism but also takes you on a gloriously sensual and detailed journey into the process of bookbinding, then I think this book will make you very happy.