Dearest Beast

by Felicia Grossman

June 30, 2026 · Forever

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B+

Genre: Historical: European, Romance

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I am RIDDLED with flu and seem to have spent most of the weekend waiting for my flu meds to kick in. To pass the time, I picked up Dearest Beast and it did a very good job of distracting me from my revolting sinuses and aching body.

Rebecca works as a midwife in London in the early 1800s. Our hero Roger’s truly horrific 9-year-old daughter Fannie sets fire to Rebecca’s workroom (and house) through her carelessness. As is written in Jewish law, Roger now needs to make whole what was ruined. So he undertakes repairs to Rebecca’s house and, because the house is not habitable, Rebecca stays with him and his two children in his massive home.

Roger works for his family’s surety company. While he and Rebecca detest each other, several months before the fire, Roger and Rebecca had spectacularly hot sex in a library at a friend’s ball. So the scene is set for FIREWORKS.

The plot follows Rebecca and Roger getting to know each other during the six weeks that she stays at his house. Rebecca is an Ashkenazi Jew who is not particularly popular but respected for her skills as a midwife. Roger is a Sephardi Jew who wants to be a leader in the Jewish community. He socialises with Gentiles and feels it is his mission to make the Jewish community as secure and safe in London as possible. That often means ‘putting aside’ his Jewishness and bending to the mores of the ton. If you take into account the views of the two groups that make up the Jewish population in London at the time, the two do not suit. His community looks down on hers, but more than that, Rebecca describes herself as an outsider and unpopular even within her own part of the community.

In the early chapters of the story I was tingly with excitement (and flu meds) at how these two would find their way to each other when there is such a barrier between them. Added to the barrier is the fact that they don’t like each other. Rebecca thinks that Roger is totally up himself and Roger thinks that Rebecca is pretty much a disgrace to the Jewish cause. Spoiler! Both are wrong!

For the HEA to happen, both Rebecca and Roger have to undergo a pretty significant transformation of their ideas of themselves and who they should be.

Rebecca, according to her childhood bullies, is cold, plain and unappealing. This is a description that she treats as objective fact for much of the book. While she has formed close friendships with the heroines from the first two books in this series, she still allows these bullies to dictate who she is. This cruel and inaccurate assessment is something she has to learn to put aside.

Roger’s transformation focuses on him working out what exactly it is he wants in his life and not what he thinks his life should include. For much of his life he has dedicated himself to ensuring the safety and security of his community and to being a paragon within that same group. But WHY does he feel like this is his burden? He has to learn to put down things which he does not want to carry.

But what about Fannie and her brother? My issue with children in romance novels is longstanding. So often they’re caricatures rather than believable characters. Fannie is thoroughly unlikeable at the start but as we spend time in Roger’s home, we get to know both children and their depiction is believable and interesting.

This is a thoroughly Jewish story. I am not Jewish or all that familiar with Judaism, so some of it went right over my head. That didn’t stand in the way of me enjoying the book though! There would be words or actions here and there that I didn’t understand, but they were not central to following the plot or the transformation of Roger and Rebecca.

However, the book does not shy away from the very real peril that Jewish people faced historically and at the time. It also doesn’t shy away from divisions within the Jewish community of London. There is a comprehensive author’s note at the end which gives more detail and it made for compelling reading itself. In this setting, it feels like a rebellion, hell, a revolution, to put love first. To look around you and consider your history and say, ‘damn the circumstances, I will have true love in my life’. I cheered, CHEERED, when we reached the HEA.

If you need your hero and heroine to overcome big obstacles to being together, if you like enemies-to-lovers who rage-bang at the start of a story, and if you enjoy rich historical detail, then Dearest Beast is well worth considering. I happily recommend it to the Bitchery.