I read the first book in this, the Maiden Lane series, but didn’t do a write up for it before starting book two and now it has sort of evaporated out of my head so I am just going to skip that one and go straight into Notorious Pleasures. Notorious Pleasures deals with Lady Hero Batten, the lovely, proper, and dutiful sister of the Duke of Wakefield, who is about to be engaged to Thomas Reading, the Marquess of Mandeville. The book opens with her having entered a small room to adjust her wayward stocking at a ball, only to find the room occupied by a couple in flagrante delicto. Unfortunately for the couple, Hero noticed the lady’s husband headed toward the room, so she delicately interrupts them to try to prevent an incident which would lead to a duel. The gentleman in the room ends up being the brother of her fiance, Griffin Reading. After Griffin hides and the other lady is fetched away by her husband, they verbally spar a bit and he calls her Lady Perfect in response to her admonitions against his behavior, at which point she calls him Lord Shameless. Sparks fly, yadda, yadda.
Griffin and his brother are on very poor terms with one another and Hero is warned to stay away from the scoundrel by her family. However, Hero is a patroness of the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children in St. Giles, one of the most dangerous places in all London. Griffin finds her traveling there with only two footmen for protection and insists that she allow him to escort her while she is in St. Giles or else he will inform her brother of her presence in that locale, and Hero fears her brother will refuse to allow her to continue to oversee the construction of the new Home so she agrees. As they spend time together they find themselves drawn to one another and the banging commences. As one might expect, that doesn’t particularly help the family dynamics.
The book is basically the struggle of Hero being torn between her lust and feelings for Griffin versus her duty to be a proper lady and make a good match with Thomas, and Griffin falling for someone versus just plowing his way through a forgettable cloud of willing ladies. There is a lot more going on than just the romance and we know that the other people we meet in this book are likely to pop up again in books of their own and we see glimpses of dimension in their personalities. The Ghost of St. Giles is a mysterious figure that was introduced in the last book and makes some appearances here as well and it is a fun thread weaving in and out of the story that again hints at the breadth of the worldbuilding.
On the down side, this one was a little heavy on the Bad Communication Angst for me. Hero admits (to herself) that it is due to her cowardice but maybe she should do a little less silent agonizing over how if she doesn’t do the thing, really bad thing X will happen to the man she loves and more actual vocalizing of ‘Dude, I don’t want to do the thing but if I don’t do the thing, something horrible will happen so maybe meet me halfway here, huh?’ Also, Griffin operates a gin distillery and part of the friction between him and Hero occurs because of the fact that gin was a terrible scourge on the lower classes – William Hogarth’s etching “Gin Lane” is set in St. Giles and depicts some of the horrors related to gin (thanks, Wikipedia! Wikipedia also enlightened me to the fact that while the artwork might seem excessive, there are stories such as that of Judith Dufour who in 1734 reclaimed her two-year-old child from the workhouse (two years old!) where it had been given a new set of clothes; she then strangled it and left the infant’s body in a ditch so that she could sell the clothes to buy gin.) Yeah, maybe Hero has a point. And once again, terrible things happen in this book to the denizens of St. Giles who don’t have the good fortune to be protagonists in a romance novel so that we can truly understand that it is a Dangerous Place. I get what Hoyt was going for but as I like my romances to be escapes from reality, I didn’t really enjoy reading about horrible things happening to innocent people.
Another thing that vexes me about this book is the pricing. Most of the romances I buy tend to be under $5, usually well under. While I will happily pay more than that for authors I adore, Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series is (so far) not among my favorite romances ever. They are fun but I do find myself getting irritated with the characters, which I get is a Thing in the genre in terms of setting up conflict but not really my cuppa. Also, while I am intrigued by the hints Hoyt is dropping about the identity of the Ghost of St. Giles, if it ends up being who I think she is suggesting I will be irritated because her scene descriptions don’t really allow for it. Getting back to the pricing issue, I have also found that the books (at least the earlier issues) aren’t available in my library or on Overdrive. I like the books enough to want to continue – Hoyt does do a nice job of setting up the characters for the next book in each previous volume – so I went on eBay and picked up some used paperbacks for the front end of the series. But it would be easier to recommend the series if it were not so expensive/difficult to read.
Finally, a shoutout to the covers. I generally dislike historical romance covers because they have what seem to me to be ridiculously anachronistic dresses on women who are more often than not missing their heads because heads aren’t erogenous enough or something but this series (US Kindle version) has a number of covers featuring studmuffins with open shirts against really pretty backgrounds so yay? I love that the shirt on this one is a dedicated Sexy Romance Hero shirt too because there appears to be no way to fasten it closed. And the paperback version of the cover features (almost) recognizable scenes from the books (shown above). I did find a cover online from Hachette Australia that nearly made me swoon, aside from the ubiquitous decapitation thing. I am in no way a historical costume expert so it may be all kinds of wrong but look – no KoolAid colors (in fact, Hero is described several times as wearing a dress of silvery green so it looks like they made an effort to emulate that)! They’re wearing gloves and their clothes aren’t falling off! They appear to my uninitiated eye like they could be in some PBS drama and that’s good enough for me. Way to go, Hachette Australia.
The Maiden Lane books so far are a lot like movie popcorn – I don’t exactly like it but I still can’t seem to stop ordering it and chowing down.
