Marriage of convenience! Vestiges of imperial conflict! Mary Wollstonecraft fan clubs!

Super rich feminist and her best friend's equally rich and fancy immigrated step-brother. He has a past, she has a crush.

2 POVs, 3rd person past tense, spicy, characters in their early/mid 20s, early 1800s London

The tension and pacing are good. The relationship development make sense when it had moments it could have been dicey. The plot moves and keeps you interested.

It does feel like Spencer ran out of room to flesh out these characters and needed to wrap the book or make some unnecessary scene cuts. It would have been nice to spend more time in Drusilla's day-to-day and political activism. [90% in]

Especially since she keeps getting scammed.

Gabe starts off charming and then kinda swerves into flirting with bossy middle eastern traditionalist/misogyny stereotypes. There's not a lot of explanation on why this isn't an instant turn off for our girl, beyond "I've been in love with him for 5 years." He really throws out some red flags and then sort of goes "jk jk" in a way you actually believe. His story even adds some likeable queer/poly representation in the mix. I don't super know who this guy is supposed to be.

Sex scenes: has some strong sex scenes. Spencer does a good job right out of the gate.

Narrator: Heather Wilds was great. She made a few choices that threw me off, (e.g. Gabe's mom is blue blood British but rocks a middle eastern accent) but they still worked.

While this is Book 1 of the Rebels of the Ton trilogy, Gabe and his family are in Spencer's book "Dangerous" in her earlier Outcasts trilogy. (Which I haven't read at this point and seemed fine.)