tl:dr: I am bumbling around trying not to tell you everything about Just for the Season. It works on many levels.
I enjoyed Rachel Griffith’s first book, The Trouble with Anna, but I immediately knew that Charlotte and Wolfgang were going to be the couple I wanted to know more about. Charlotte romps her way through Trouble, while Wolfgang has a rather short, but memorable, cameo. Still, I’ve been reading romance long enough to know when characters are meant for each other.
A few years earlier, Charlotte met Wolfgang, one of her brother Julien’s good friends. They began writing to each other daily and Charlotte thought they were courting. And then he dropped her like a hot potato. She has been hurting ever since. Fast forward a few years – after Charlotte is blamed for a scene caused by a man, the Queen declares that she must be engaged by the end of the Summer. What to do but retreat to the country estate and invite eligible men to join them? Charlotte’s grandmother asks Wolfgang and his brother to join them to “keep an eye on things.” Charlotte’s grandmother is an agent of chaos in the best way.
Just for the Season is so satisfying on so many levels. The romance is top notch with yearning, pining, and slow burning. The misunderstanding that separated Charlotte and Wolfgang feels understandable and when it’s resolved, there is still a process of healing the emotional damage. Wolfgang gets several well deserved kicks in the head and learns his lesson. His “ideal woman” speech made me gasp. Charlotte is a dynamo who leaps off the page. She grabbed me in The Trouble with Anna, and she never lets up. The characters are well drawn and interesting. The social commentary is impeccable.
Marriage is a quandary for Charlotte for several reasons.
- She has witnessed the many ways marrying the wrong man can wreck a woman’s life,
- Wolfgang broke her heart,
- unmarried British women had many more economic and legal rights than married women in 1818, but
- she needs a friendly husband in order to access her marriage portion for reasons, and
- [redacted for spoiler reasons].
Looking forward, I hope there is at least one more book in this series. If Lisa Kleypas wrote this, one of the suitors would definitely be the next main character with his good looks, charm, aristocratically traumatic backstory, and strong, “Daddy, I can fix him vibes.” There’s another pairing that’s hinted at, and I’d love to see where Griffiths goes with it. I want to know that Elizabeth and her sisters are safe from their father’s whims. I just want more of all of this.
I don’t usually talk about covers because I think we’re in a weird period for cover art. Additionally, unless going the self-pub route, authors often don’t have a huge amount of say in the cover art. But I think is something notable happening here. It’s horny in a way we don’t see very often. They are sucking each other’s faces. I like that part. The art work itself is kind of juvenile and cartoony, as is common in romance. Focus on the horny, ignore Wolfgang looking like an awkward 1990’s heartthrob.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Gallery Books and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.
