The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray

by Anna Bradley

October 27, 2020 · Lyrical Press

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C+

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I picked this ARC up for the title, which delighted me, and for the setting, which centres around a charity school for Wayward Girls in Georgian England that is in fact a secret training ground for young women on a mission to bring justice to corrupt aristocrats. The Virgin who Ruined Lord Gray straddles the line between traditional historical romance and romantic suspense, and I found it an enjoyable, but flawed read.

This story centres around Sophia Monmouth, who is on a quest to rescue her friend and surrogate brother, Jeremy (Jim), who has been framed for murder. Her quest leads her to a rooftop, where she is spotted by Tristan Stratford, Lord Gray, a former Bow Street Runner and a close friend of the man Jim supposedly murdered. There is a pursuit, with plenty of cleverness on each side; there is clear sexual tension; and then there is a cat and mouse game, because Tristan believes Jim to be guilty, and Sophia knows that he is not.

Sophia is a really fun character: clever, loyal, and resourceful, though a bit inclined to making impulsive decisions and throwing herself into danger. I enjoyed the chemistry between her and Tristan, and the push-pull of their relationship as they figured out if they could trust each other and work together. I loved Tristan’s dedication to justice but even more his willingness to change his mind about something that was important to him when faced with new evidence.

The plot and the setting were also interesting and well-researched – I liked the way the conspiracy that Tristan and Sophia uncover plays into contemporary politics of the time. The plot was nicely twisty, and I didn’t see all of the twists coming. This was definitely a book that kept me turning pages to find out what happened.

One of the more interesting things about this book was Tristan’s relationship to justice and the law. As a former Bow Street Runner, he has absolute faith in the legal process and in the men of Bow Street, and while he accepts, at least in theory, that there may be times when they get it wrong, he is absolutely sure that the law is generally just and that those who enforce it are sincere in their pursuit of justice. This is a belief that Sophia constantly challenges. Having lived on the streets prior to being taken up by Lady Clifford and inducted into her charity school, she is all too well aware that the law may provide justice to the wealthy, but is frequently unjust to those who are less privileged. Tristan does come to accept this over the course of the book – his allegiance is, ultimately, to justice rather than the law – but on reflection, I felt like this should have hit him harder than it did, because that was a lot of foundational assumptions that got overturned.

This leads into my major criticism of the story, which is that it lacked emotional depth. Some of the things Tristan learns late in the book are genuinely upsetting, both on a personal level and in terms of the way they impact his world view and yet he doesn’t really react to them – all of his emotional energy is centred on worrying about Sophia. (Tristan’s friend, Lord Lyndon, is concerned at his sudden and intense attachment to Sophia, and hints on several occasions that perhaps, just perhaps, Tristan might be besotted with Sophia and thinking with his little head instead of his big one. We are, I think, supposed to sympathise with Tristan, but personally, I felt that Lyndon had a point.)

On reflection, there were a few sets of emotional baggage discarded along the way in the latter part of this book :

Another issue the book had was the tendency of Tristan and Sophia not to speak to each other at crucial moments. On several occasions, significant drama and pain could have been avoided with a simple conversation which someone chose not to have, and this was frustrating.

A final, perhaps petty, issue that I had with this book is that it promises us that delicious setting – a girl’s school that trains spies! – and it never really capitalises on it. We meet Lady Clifford and several of her students, and they seem like good people, but mostly all we see them do is read gothic novels together and provide emotional support to each other. And look, I am all in favour of female friendships and gothic novels, but this is a school, basically, for female spies, and I wanted a training montage! Or at least, something a little bit more nefarious than what I got. This was, perhaps, my biggest disappointment with the story.

Despite all of this, The Virgin who Ruined Lord Gray is a genuinely fun and engaging read. Unfortunately, it is also a book that doesn’t reward reflection; the more I thought about the events and the emotional arcs of the characters, the less they seemed to make sense. And yet…while I was reading it, I was carried along by the story and didn’t notice any of these issues. It was also quite a sticky story – I kept going back to it when I was supposed to be doing other things. This tells me that the author was doing something very well, at least!

I’m going to give this a C plus, because while I really don’t think it worked overall, I did enjoy the journey.