4.25/5. Releases 5/23/2023.

For when you're vibing with... Confident, mature heroines, adoring rakes, a bit of trick gunslinging, and situationships that turn into real relationships.

I like my first Minerva Spencer read, The Boxing Baroness. The follow-up was even better--sleeker, more romantic, with less focus on the history and more focus on the couple (and the fun lady circus!). There were a few bold takes with The Dueling Duchess, and I was into it.

Quick Takes:
--Cecile, our heroine, is French; and the book actually kicks off during the Revolution when she's a young teen. I loved this, just as I enjoyed the awareness of a world beyond England in the previous book. While most of this novel does take place in England, Cecile doesn't feel like an English heroine, and you get a sense of a wider, richer world than is often present in Regency historicals.

--Another thing about Cecile, a heroine I loved: she's 35-36 over the course of this novel, and she knows her shit. She knows what she likes, she knows what she doesn't like, and she suffers no fools. This doesn't mean she's cold or incapable of emotion (one of my favorite moments in the book lets us know just how much this isn't the case) but she's seen the world and she's both guarded and voracious enough be unable to resist Guy. Because Guy is Hot. And Guy is famous for his ability do sex things.

--So often--especially recently, I'm not gonna lie--I read about heroes who are presented as rakes, and as you read the book you're like... this is not a rake. Guy reads like an actual rake; he's charming, he's hot, his exploits are written about in newspapers, and he cucks randoms. We love him. Both Guy and Cecile are people who have slept with others. The book does not shy away from their experiences. It does not shame them for it. They get jealous, but they're also like.... fucking adults about it. The conflicts they do have are less about their mutual pasts, and more about their feelings for each other.

--One thing I felt like The Boxing Baroness suffered from was a somewhat slower feeling because of how much was going on outside of the central love story. Here, we're a lot more focused on Guy and Cecile's relationship and character development. There is external conflict and it matters, but the story is much tighter.

--I really enjoyed the lady circus in this go-around, as well as how much of Cecile's identity was tied up in it. A lot of this book was about Cecile having such a strong sense of independence... which is good! However, her journey involved recognizing that she hid behind her independence to avoid hard, risky emotions and relationships. It felt really authentic, and it transcended the historical setting.

--While this is definitely a heroine-forward book, Guy is such a good hero. He's a hero who basically spends most of the book groveling; but his faults are more down to a lack of understanding than true cruelty. He fucking looooves this woman, and the fact that this is a second chance romance (wherein we do flash back to the beginning of their first go) solidifies that.

The Sex Stuff:
Yeah, this one is hot. You get all the "good girl"-ing you could want (I have such a thing for when a hero is younger than the heroine and calls her a good girl), there's no worrying about virginal hesitance, Cecile! Likes! It! Rough! I absolutely loved the sex scenes in this book.

This was just such a solid historical romance. I would love to see more in this vein--rollicking, with just the right amount of emotion. It felt very old school meets new school.

Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.