This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @‌thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.

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Complicated emotional entanglements light up The Bonnet Brigade, a delicate romance that contrasts with the sometimes dark world the characters must negotiate. It has a strong grounding in family ties and sisterhood, making it a fairly unique sort of romance – the love between the girls is as important as the love between the hero and heroine. A complex story deserves a hero and heroine who are extraordinary, and both of them fit that bill. It’s not a perfect romance but it’s a welcome change of pace and an interesting tale that expands in a way you won’t be expecting.

The Honorable Miss Celia Westhaven is horrified to learn that her uncle and co-guardian has lost the fortune that’s kept their family afloat thanks to a scam investment in a jewel mine in Central America. With the threat of debt collection looming over the family, Celia knows she must act quickly.

Determined to bring her three beloved cousins and her aunt to the safety of a home that cannot be taken away from them — preferably in the castle she owns, though she has neither seen nor touched it due to legal reasons regarding inheritance — she throws herself into the marriage mart to provide an income for her family. The house-proud Celia is determined not to allow her family to be broken up again after losing her mother in a horse riding accident and her father to deep grief when she was younger; she plans to marry for wealth, not love. Though Celia manages to find a man she enjoys, he doesn’t propose, so she vows to do what she must to save the family.

Peter Alcott is that man. He wanted to propose to Celia, but he’s being blackmailed into staying away from her and everyone else he loves. Someone specifically has threatened the life of his sister, Elinor, via a note and strongly hinted that they’ll kill anyone else he holds dear. Since Peter is secretly working in the intelligence field after acting as a military strategist during the War of 1812, he decides to enter into an undercover mission under the assumed name Hughes. Elinor is already at the mercy of their emotionally remote and abusive father, and is so housebound and shy that she has no idea how to navigate her way through society. Peter is afraid that she might be abused physically and emotionally by some of the less reputable men who may take advantage of her and he doesn’t want to add to her burdens by making her worry. Peter’s smuggling case requires a double identity and a whole lot of gumption, but it leads him back to Celia, no matter what he does.

Celia then lands a helpful hand in Lord Francis, a dandy who sees great potential in her as a hostess and decides to help her make a good society match. Little does she know that Francis is also involved in Peter’s life, and he urges Peter to get off his duff and marry the girl, already. As ballroom intrigue sets in and Celia remains unshakably focused on her goal, she and her cousins form The Bonnet Brigade, a society which takes a practical approach to snagging a spouse. But when Celia’s brother resurfaces and demands she resolve the family debts by marrying an abusive associate, Celia must be steadfast — and Peter must finally act — to ensure them both a happy ending.

The Bonnet Brigade does a lot of things beautifully, but what starts off as a lighter romp ends on a dark note with not just one, but two main characters dealing with sexual assault. The tone here never quite comes together in a cohesive way, which is why it landed at a B for me. The characters save it in a way that makes it a compelling and worthwhile read, however.

I liked both of our leads. Celia is a watercolorist and I loved her desire to educate other girls on top of her dream of returning to her Irish roots and finally claiming a place for the family to belong; she felt smart, solid and relatable. The way she tries to protect her cousins from the assaults of their suitors – and fails, to her eternal sadness – is heartrending.

And poor Peter is blessed with a solid, dry wit, though he is quite ashamed of his background and that provides an enormous wedge that keeps him apart from Celia for a very long time. If you like self-denial and slow burn – and a hero being so selfless as to deny himself anything resembling pleasure until he’s forcibly cluebatted into marrying the heroine – then this will be the book for you.

But romance fans will have to wait around for them to actually spend any time together. Their actual meetings and the slow development of their connection happens in drips and drabs, but at the midpoint of the story their interactions become more frequent. Big chunks of the book are spent with Celia and her cousins (and with a hateful other man) while Peter is on his mission, brooding and angsting. One does wish Peter would get on with it already and save Celia the grief, which is another reason I marked the book down a bit.

But another positive is that the chemistry between Celia and her cousins is delightful; each of them comes off as a different kind of person, all of them loving and all of them devoted to the family cause. Fierce Henrietta, teenage feminist Marianne and romantic Rose are all fun to get to know. It’s not too much of a hardship to spend time with them. And how I loved the surprising depths of Lord Francis, whose great humor and liveliness add depth to the book.

Matheson already has a quadrilogy set up in which Celia’s cousins get married, and I’m interested in watching how their romances play out. The Bonnet Brigade is a solid opening for that series, though it’s hard to deny the first book has its flaws.