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I might need to acknowledge that until my house situation has resolved, updates will not be as regular as I desire. *shakes fist at life*
Let us ignore that for a moment, however, and discuss this one-two punch of spectacular. The Lord I Left is the third in The Charlotte Street series, but can be read easily without reading either of the first two (although, for what it's worth, they are highly worth reading). The Rakess is the first in The Society of Sirens, and I believe the next is due out next year.
Diving in, The Lord I Left stars Alice, the maid-of-all-work/whipping-governess-in-training at an exclusive club for persons seeking particular fetish and and kink services, and Henry, the so-called Lord Lieutenant who is an evangelical minister charged by parliament to report on what should be done to control the problem of sex work in London at the time.
One thing I love about this book, off the top, is that both main characters are commoners. Henry grew up wealthy as his father made money in trade, Alice grew up lower class with an artisan father, and then, after his death, barely above poverty until managing to get the placing at the club. It's incredibly rare to find historicals where neither character is noble, nor even noble adjacent.
Not a lot happens, plot-wise, in this book. The characters have to take a journey together for logical reasons, they get stuck on the road at times, she meets his (partially atrocious) family, he meets her (mostly...family-like) family. The real heft of this book is in both of the characters' internal struggles to figure out what their next steps are in life. And while those questions are affected by being near one another and learning to see the world through each other's eyes, they're also driven simply by the situations they find themselves in, Alice facing a change in her family's economic circumstances, Henry hoping for reconciliation with his father.
Another element of this book that worked well for me was that it wasn't dismissive of Henry's faith. It interrogated the everloving hell out of it, poked and prodded, but there was nothing disrespectful about the fact that he believed in G-d, believed in the church as a redemptive concept.
Perhaps the best part of the book, though, is the way in which each character figures out what he and she can compromise to be with the other person--and there has to be, by the nature of their positions, compromise. Satisfyingly, it is Henry who ends up bending much further than Alice. I don't say that simply because he's the male and we are used to seeing it the other way around, and that is unquestionably a sweet spot of wish fulfillment within the female-reader-gaze, as it were. I say it because, practically, it makes sense for it to go the other way. Societally, it is easier. It is the simpler path by any measure. It is just not the best path for either of them by the end of the book. The fact that he essentially chooses uncertainty so long as Alice is there with him is incredibly emotionally pleasing.
The Rakess is as good, if not better, than The Lord I Left. As one might guess from the title, the book plays on the trope of the rake, turning it on its head. Peckham notes that the book is based significantly off of Mary Wollstonecraft's life, and I have heard her talk about that in some of the panels I've attended, the ways she drew from research on Wollstonecraft, what she used and didn't. I read review of this novel earlier this year that spoke about how in taking on this trope, and tackling it seriously, Peckham nearly wrote herself out of the genre. I think that is something of a fair assessment: this book deals explicitly with miscarriage, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, child neglect, and the institutionalization of women for the crime of speaking their minds/wanting the vote, to name a few. To begin with. Despite being romance, and despite having thoroughly enjoyed it, I wouldn't recommend it as light reading, the way I would feel confident doing even with Peckham's other books, which have serious themes and intense moments--indeed, The Duke I Tempted deals with, among other things, the loss of a wife and child. The Rakess is a romance novel, but it's a romance novel that takes an extremely stark look at what carving one's own path as a woman meant in eighteenth century Britain.
Seraphina, our heroine, is the daughter of a wealthy coal magnate who was disowned upon being discovered pregnant sans a husband at a young age. By the time we meet her, she has established herself as a woman who takes lovers, but only for short periods of time, whose only truly close ties are with the three other women pushing for radical reform. Elinor, who has brought them together, has been institutionalized by her husband for speaking out in favor of women's rights.
Meanwhile, Adam, our hero, is the Scottish bastard son of a duke. He's an architect by trade and looking to make his name and be able to draft municipal projects so as to bring in large sums. He is a widower, his wife having died in childbirth. He has two children from the marriage, and his sister lives with him, helping to raise them.
Adam needs the esteem of political conservatives to advance his career. Political conservatives hate Sera, both for her politics, but in certain cases for more personal reasons as well. In sharp contrast to Lord I Left, this book has whole heaps of plot. There are capers, there are threats left in Sera's home, there's a tell-all book, addiction and recovery, and more. Peckham is almost what I would call Chase-ian (e.g., Loretta) in her ability to craft leads who very much have their own lives outside of each other and must find ways to fit the other into their lives because the other matters that much.
Similar to Lord I Left, in the end, both of these characters have to find ways to compromise and Adam much more so than Sera. Here, Adam takes huge risks for her, risks that probably really do endanger his ability to support his children and his sister. But risks that allow him to be honest about who he is and what he believes, instead of playing a part in order to gain patronage. Sera, at the same time, has to get past trauma and terror that has disallowed her to romantically attach to anyone since she was a teenager.
This book has an explicit HEA, which I think is very deliberate and necessary on Peckham's part. It is also explicitly unconventional within the historical genre, and I don't think it's an overstatement to call that a brilliant choice in this instance.
Let us ignore that for a moment, however, and discuss this one-two punch of spectacular. The Lord I Left is the third in The Charlotte Street series, but can be read easily without reading either of the first two (although, for what it's worth, they are highly worth reading). The Rakess is the first in The Society of Sirens, and I believe the next is due out next year.
Diving in, The Lord I Left stars Alice, the maid-of-all-work/whipping-governess-in-training at an exclusive club for persons seeking particular fetish and and kink services, and Henry, the so-called Lord Lieutenant who is an evangelical minister charged by parliament to report on what should be done to control the problem of sex work in London at the time.
One thing I love about this book, off the top, is that both main characters are commoners. Henry grew up wealthy as his father made money in trade, Alice grew up lower class with an artisan father, and then, after his death, barely above poverty until managing to get the placing at the club. It's incredibly rare to find historicals where neither character is noble, nor even noble adjacent.
Not a lot happens, plot-wise, in this book. The characters have to take a journey together for logical reasons, they get stuck on the road at times, she meets his (partially atrocious) family, he meets her (mostly...family-like) family. The real heft of this book is in both of the characters' internal struggles to figure out what their next steps are in life. And while those questions are affected by being near one another and learning to see the world through each other's eyes, they're also driven simply by the situations they find themselves in, Alice facing a change in her family's economic circumstances, Henry hoping for reconciliation with his father.
Another element of this book that worked well for me was that it wasn't dismissive of Henry's faith. It interrogated the everloving hell out of it, poked and prodded, but there was nothing disrespectful about the fact that he believed in G-d, believed in the church as a redemptive concept.
Perhaps the best part of the book, though, is the way in which each character figures out what he and she can compromise to be with the other person--and there has to be, by the nature of their positions, compromise. Satisfyingly, it is Henry who ends up bending much further than Alice. I don't say that simply because he's the male and we are used to seeing it the other way around, and that is unquestionably a sweet spot of wish fulfillment within the female-reader-gaze, as it were. I say it because, practically, it makes sense for it to go the other way. Societally, it is easier. It is the simpler path by any measure. It is just not the best path for either of them by the end of the book. The fact that he essentially chooses uncertainty so long as Alice is there with him is incredibly emotionally pleasing.
The Rakess is as good, if not better, than The Lord I Left. As one might guess from the title, the book plays on the trope of the rake, turning it on its head. Peckham notes that the book is based significantly off of Mary Wollstonecraft's life, and I have heard her talk about that in some of the panels I've attended, the ways she drew from research on Wollstonecraft, what she used and didn't. I read review of this novel earlier this year that spoke about how in taking on this trope, and tackling it seriously, Peckham nearly wrote herself out of the genre. I think that is something of a fair assessment: this book deals explicitly with miscarriage, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, child neglect, and the institutionalization of women for the crime of speaking their minds/wanting the vote, to name a few. To begin with. Despite being romance, and despite having thoroughly enjoyed it, I wouldn't recommend it as light reading, the way I would feel confident doing even with Peckham's other books, which have serious themes and intense moments--indeed, The Duke I Tempted deals with, among other things, the loss of a wife and child. The Rakess is a romance novel, but it's a romance novel that takes an extremely stark look at what carving one's own path as a woman meant in eighteenth century Britain.
Seraphina, our heroine, is the daughter of a wealthy coal magnate who was disowned upon being discovered pregnant sans a husband at a young age. By the time we meet her, she has established herself as a woman who takes lovers, but only for short periods of time, whose only truly close ties are with the three other women pushing for radical reform. Elinor, who has brought them together, has been institutionalized by her husband for speaking out in favor of women's rights.
Meanwhile, Adam, our hero, is the Scottish bastard son of a duke. He's an architect by trade and looking to make his name and be able to draft municipal projects so as to bring in large sums. He is a widower, his wife having died in childbirth. He has two children from the marriage, and his sister lives with him, helping to raise them.
Adam needs the esteem of political conservatives to advance his career. Political conservatives hate Sera, both for her politics, but in certain cases for more personal reasons as well. In sharp contrast to Lord I Left, this book has whole heaps of plot. There are capers, there are threats left in Sera's home, there's a tell-all book, addiction and recovery, and more. Peckham is almost what I would call Chase-ian (e.g., Loretta) in her ability to craft leads who very much have their own lives outside of each other and must find ways to fit the other into their lives because the other matters that much.
Similar to Lord I Left, in the end, both of these characters have to find ways to compromise and Adam much more so than Sera. Here, Adam takes huge risks for her, risks that probably really do endanger his ability to support his children and his sister. But risks that allow him to be honest about who he is and what he believes, instead of playing a part in order to gain patronage. Sera, at the same time, has to get past trauma and terror that has disallowed her to romantically attach to anyone since she was a teenager.
This book has an explicit HEA, which I think is very deliberate and necessary on Peckham's part. It is also explicitly unconventional within the historical genre, and I don't think it's an overstatement to call that a brilliant choice in this instance.
