Felicia Grossman has been on my authors to read list for quite awhile. I follow her on social media and she seems like someone who would write books I would enjoy reading. I was correct. I found Marry Me by Midnight delightful. It is a gender swapped, Jewish Cinderella set in London during the late Georgian period (not long after the Regency).
Isabelle Lira needs a husband to help her keep her portion of her late father’s surety business. His surviving business partners, the Berab brothers, don’t want a 23 year old woman acting as a full partner. They want her to get married to a man they approve of, preferably one of them, and they’ve put a tight deadline on her choice. The upcoming Parliament vote on granting legal rights to Jewish people in Britain adds another layer of pressure. Isabelle has decided she needs a husband who will keep the Lira name on the business, but not be in the Berab brothers’ pocket, maintain their status within the Jewish community in London, and solidify support among the Gentiles. When Isabelle explains all this to Aaron, the Synagogue’s custodian, he points out that she will be at her husband’s mercy, so she should choose a man who loves her. She comes back with a proposal. Not a marriage proposal, a business proposal. She doesn’t trust love, so she needs to know her suitor’ secrets. The right secret could be leverage. She promises Aaron 200 pounds if he will uncover the secrets of the men courting her. He agrees, because 200 pounds would greatly improve his chance of making his own marriage.
Aaron is our Disney princess. He believes in love, feeds the animals, cares for the elderly and children, listens to Isabelle and is honest with her, and is ridiculously good looking. Isabelle is still grieving the loss of her father and taking on the weight of the world. She is strong and self confident, and a joy to read, even when she’s making dumb choices. Naturally they fall in love and start a forbidden, and quite spicy romance. The central conflict is whether Isabelle will follow her heart, or do what she thinks is best for the business, her community, and her people.
One of the reasons I don’t read historical romance as much as I used to is because so much of it is dominated by white Christians in a very small window of time with so much of the focus being acquisition of wealth through marriage. Of course there are some very good romances within those parameters. There are also authors, like Felicia Grossman, who are writing about characters and communities that lived outside the British aristocracy of the Regency. In Marry Me by Midnight, Grossman really conveys the fragile position of the Jewish community in London. She captures the dynamic of marginalized communities in relation to the dominant community in a way that would likely be relatable to many people today. And I don’t want to spoil anything, but it felt very timely when Isabelle’s grandmother points out that if the vote to grant Jews legal rights is dependent on the marriage of one young woman, they weren’t going to grant those rights anyway.
I enjoyed this so much, and I’m looking forward to more from the author.
CW: Death of parents in past, discussion of communities being forced out of countries in past, discussion of threat of antisemitism, internalized antisemitism, attempted murder, physical violence.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.
