Reading Lady Derring Takes a Lover is like starting a new relationship. Everything is super awesome and wrapped in a blissful glow but then a few weeks pass and you start to notice that maybe your hot new date has some annoying habits, but that’s OK, because no one is perfect. What I’m saying here is that I was passionately in love with this book, but realized later that it’s not actually perfect, but still good. I mean yeah, fine, maybe sometimes it’s late for a date but it it still shows up with flowers so I’m sticking with it.
Our story begins when Lady Delilah Derring’s husband dies and she discovers that he left no money. She doesn’t even own the clothes she is wearing, although for reasons Delilah cannot fathom, she was bequeathed a building at the docks. She goes to visit her late husband’s solicitor and encounters her late husband’s mistress there, in a sublimely awkward scene.
Delilah was not madly in love with her husband but she did not know that he had a mistress and she’s quite annoyed about it. However, it is not lost on her that the mistress, who is called Angelique Breedlove (not her real name) seems to know how survival works. Delilah and her last remaining employee, Dot, go to a tavern, find Angelique, and many glasses of sherry later the slightly unsteady trio examines Delilah’s building and declares it fit to be a boarding house. Armed with a new potential source of income, the women proceed to clean the place, win Delilah’s cook back, and open the highly respectable “Grand Palace on the Thames.”
Honestly, this is not a book that needs to be a romance. The romance is fine, and I’ll get to that, but who needs some man cluttering things up when we have Delilah, Dot, and Angelique? Delilah and Angelique don’t always get along perfectly. At first, this disappointed me, but the more it went on the more I liked it. They just get on each other’s nerves sometimes, and that’s realistic considering that they embarked on this project not after years of fast friendship but rather after one night of heavy drinking. They don’t let their spats get in the way of business and overall they seem to realize that their differences complement each other.
Delilah’s vision is to create a home for people, and she and Angelique screen guests with a view towards not only who can pay but who will contribute to this vision. Guests are required to dine together and socialize together at least four times a week, and there is a swear jar. The guests include two very shy sisters who rarely talk, a salesman who just wants a home and who had better freaking well get his own match at some point in the series or I will riot, and a cranky naval Captain named Tristan Hardy, who is trying to find a smuggler but who finds Delilah instead.
Here’s Captain Hardy trying to get Delilah to rent him a room:
“Now that I know a bit more about what sort of establishment this is–and it does sound like a fine establishment–would you mind telling me a bit more about the rules?”
She looked relieved. “They’re very simple, really. We expect our male guests to behave like gentlemen in the presence of ladies. Rough language, drinking, spitting, or smoking will not be tolerated in the drawing room when ladies are present, and will be fined one pence per word. We’ve a jar, you see.”
“A jar.” He said this with every evidence of fascination.
“But we also have a withdrawing room for gentlemen, in which they can unleash their baser impulses in case the effort of restraint becomes too much to bear.”
Lady Derring was very dry.
“What a relief to hear. Tethering instincts wears a devil out.”
He was rewarded with a smile, one of delightful slow, crooked affairs, as if she just couldn’t help herself, and he, for a moment, could not have formed words for admiring it.
Tristan is a super angsty but endlessly sarcastic character who cannot fail to generate hilarity wherever he goes. His very aversion to hilarity makes it inevitable. His wit is so dry that most people don’t even catch it, although Delilah, also a master of the deadpan, most certainly does. Delilah does not know that Tristan has taken a room at her boarding house because he thinks it’s a smuggling den. Tristan cannot figure out why all clues have led him to what appears to be a very respectable house with a curfew and a swear jar.
I’m giving this book a B- because the romance is the weakest part of the story, there’s a plot twist that I disliked immensely, and because there’s a brief (not graphic) attempted rape which is completely and totally unnecessary. I liked the romance in this book, but I find I have little to say about it. Since this story is marketed as a Romance Novel, I feel like I should have more to say than, “Don’t worry, the romance doesn’t break up the boarding house found family which is what I really care about.” And as for the twist, I must admit that I did not see it coming, but I also found it to be rather depressing and in poor taste. I had gotten so interested in people as they presented themselves to be that it was a sad let down when some characters turn out to be other than they first appeared.
Yet I plan on reading this book again because of the community and the humor, not to mention the feminism (the book abounds in strong women who want to be independent and respected). For me, the draw of the book, and what makes it memorable, is the creation of a family, from that first horrible meeting of widow and mistress, to a home that provides the women with independence and the boarders with a sense of comfort, safety, and respect.
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I pretty much unreservedly adored this one, but I’m a big ol’ hoe for JAL’s work.
I felt like this about Elizabeth Hoyt’s latest book. I would have been just as happy with it if it had been just the women helping other women and talking about embroidery patterns.
Imma just buy it now at full price to support JAL.
I finished this in two days. JAL is one of my favorite Regency authors so I was so excited for this book. While I loved both characters in their own, I actually found the beginning a bit slow since it took so long for Delilah and Tristan to meet and there was so much first book in the series plot to set up. For me, it really only settled into everything I love about JAL’s romance when Tristan and Delilah really started having conversations. I am super excited for Angelique’s book too – the moment she appeared I hoped she would be the next heroine.
I just came across this. I’m curious about the “twist” that Carrie S. objects to. There are some reveals about borders, but those I found were all signaled pretty clearly ahead of time. I was actually annoyed that they were treated as surprises at all. If this isn’t the annoying twist, I wonder what it was? I wasn’t even remotely in love with the hero here, but it sounds as if regular JAL readers were. In any case, after reading the review, I am just thinking: which twist? what twist?
Minor issue… But the heroine is charging tenants £10 a week to live in a rooming house. In today’s money, that’s about $900. Per week.
A Navy captain (how the hero is portraying himself) would have only earned about £250/year. So one who was willing to spend over twice his weekly salary on a rooming house in a crappy neighborhood should have been suspicious as hell…(as should really anyone staying there because you could get a furnished house for a year in a decent neighborhood at the cost of six weeks there.)
It’s getting in the way of the book for me…
I had the same issue as MsCellanie. I started to worry that the author doesn’t actually know that pounds (“quid”) and sovereigns are the same thing, and/or had forgotten the existence of the shilling. The math made no sense! Also, there was a certain existential uncertainty over whether Tristan was in the Army or the Navy that I found a smidge distracting. But I did enjoy it for all the reasons in the OP. (If it’s the twist I’m thinking of, I thought it was pretty well telegraphed.)
I’m super late to this review, but going to leave my thoughts for future readers! This review will spoil the ‘twist’ but it feels important – I would have appreciated knowing this ahead of time, and I wouldn’t have started the book if I had clearly understood what was going to be included. Hopefully that’s okay.
I have really enjoyed Julie Anne Long’s books in the past and maybe I would enjoy this one too, but I could see the ‘twist’ coming and reading a bunch of reviews confirmed it… and at this time of intensely heightened transphobia, I just do not have it in me to read a story that includes that tired, hostile, transphobic trope of
Ack, that tag did not do what I thought it would do. Sorry!
@Tiffany:
All fixed! You were right that there’s an S in the spoiler tag but to hide something you type [ s p o i l e r ] (no spaces) and then end with [ / s p o i l e r ]
Thank you for this comment, also. You’re absolutely welcome to share your experience, and your feelings to warn other readers. Thank you for pointing this out.
@Tiffany, thank you so much for this comment! I forgot all about this review. Your comment is spot on. I regret not calling this out properly in the review., and I apologize to our readers. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this, it’s an important topic!
Sarah and Carrie, thank you for those welcoming replies! I really love the site and I love romance, and don’t want to be a downer, so it’s great to know that it’s okay to comment about this kind of thing. <3
@Tiffany: Please always feel welcome to comment to talk about an element of a book that you found hurtful or harmful. It’s important, as Carrie said. Thank you for doing so!