Disclaimer: I was given a free audiobook copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

TW: There are brief moments when a trans character is called by their dead name. Instances of substance use (alcohol and opioids). Accurate depiction of PTSD. Ableism directly addressed as harmful and wrong.  

Narration review: Kay Eluvian gives a top tier performance. She breathed life into each character, and had me swooning and blushing over Viola and Gracewood. Talk about bi panic. 😅⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is the historical Trans woman led Romance I’ve been waiting for my whole life. Viola is my heart. She’s so beautiful and funny, and feminine. Her struggle is so real and relatable. I loved how she was allowed time and space to grow, and come to love on her own terms. I also treasure how many women are in the story, as well as queer and trans characters too. But I especially loved how she was able to be her authentic self with her family, and had a support system before having to deal with society as herself.

Gracewood, ah Gracewood. He’s all the things one could comes to expect in a Romance novel Duke. Restrained strength, stern but polite manners, and enough emotional trauma to choke a horse. He’s wounded in so many ways, but they’re not framed as plot convinces. The story, and Viola in particular, treats him like a whole person. Shows him respect and allows him dignity while he struggles to adjust to his disability. He too has changed since the war and has his own reckoning of sorts with the man he is opposed to the man he was raised to be. I loved how his struggle with toxic masculinity was handled with compassion.

This entire story is a skilled challenge to gender roles in general, but their part in the popular tropes of Historical Romance specifically. All the tent poles of the genre are present. From the country estates to the Season in Town, to a scandal that threatens the reputation of a lady. Yet, at every turn the gendered aspect, expectations are subverted in clever ways that humanized the characters. Not just the leads, all the characters. 

Despite the very angsty set up this story felt like a warm hug to my soul. I fell fast and hard for Viola and Gracewood. Though I was anxious and impatient for them to work things out, I was never bored nor did I want to skip ahead because the entire cast were engaging and endearing. I love them all so much, I’m crossing my fingers for more novels about the supporting characters. 

I did not expect there to be an explicit sex scene, which is very much a mark of my own biased assumptions about how these two would or could navigate sex in this era. Shame on me. Because they have sex, glorious heart stopping sex that had me breathless and blushing.

This book utterly amazing. A fantastic Regency Romance, with a wonderfully determined and witty heroine and an intense restrained and swoony hero. And a supporting cast that will have you rolling with laughter and wishing you could crawl into the book to have tea and swap gossip with them all.

I highly recommend this to fans of Austen, Bridgeton, Regency Romance and having sex with pretty shoes on.-