leading lady

Lady Charlotte Lovett is a widow, but she is still a young woman, and her father intends to find her another suitable mate. However, Lady Charlotte has other ideas for herself.

First of all, she wants to become financially independent. She has a small inheritance, and she wants to invest it. Her cousins own a coffee shop. It’s only for men, of course, but Lady Charlotte wants to offer women a similar place they can go to gather and talk politics and such. Her idea is to take a room in the back of the coffee shop and turn it into a sort of salon, where women and men can go for coffee drinks and conversation.

While the coffee up front is served dark and bitter, to the men who sit on long tables, Charlotte wants to transform the back room with sofas and chairs in cozy arrangements. The coffee served back there will also be sweeter. While her cousins were reluctant, Charlotte was putting up her inheritance to make her ideas come to life, so they agreed. Lady Charlotte was on her way to creating her own income.

But she had another motive for wanting to set up a room in the coffee house. The man her father chose for her, Viscount Hawley, has been married before. Twice, in fact. And both of his former wives died suddenly. Lady Charlotte is worried about what might happen to her if she were to become his wife, if she might face the same fate. She is desperate to find a reason not to go through with the wedding, and she thinks that the type of men who come to the coffee shop might give her some background information on the Viscount’s behavior.

As it turns out, Lady Charlotte is not the only one with questions about Hawley’s behavior. His younger brother, Dr. Matthew Talbot, also has been keeping an eye on Hawley. And when Charlotte and Matthew team up to try to bring the Viscount down, they find that they have a similar way of seeing the world. They have a spark. And that spark is creating a lot of heat. But will they be able to extricate Lady Charlotte from her engagement in time, or will the villainous Viscount Hawley disrupt all their plans?

Lady Charlotte Always Gets Her Man is part Regency romance, part thriller, as Charlotte and her friends and family work hard to bring down a psychopathic killer while Charlotte works to find her own voice and create a life that would make her happy at a time when women weren’t expected to be much more than a pretty face. It’s set in historical times but with modern themes and clever characters. With a slow burn romance, lots of humor, and a parrot and a monkey who steal all the scenes they’re in, this novel is fun, smart, and propulsive, with a plot that draws you in and keeps you interested.

I listened to the audio book, narrated by Katy Sobey. I thought Sobey’s narration was delightful, bringing the perfect amount of class and sophistication to the character of Lady Charlotte, making it easy to root for her and stay engaged with this story. I’m sure reading this book would be lots of fun, but listening to the audio really brings it to life. I am not a huge fan of historical novels, but I did get caught up in Lady Charlotte’s story, and I was excited to hear at the end some hints that there may be another story to be told in this universe. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for that, and for anything else author Violet Marsh writes.

A copy of the audio book for Lady Charlotte Always Gets Her Man was provided by Hachette Audio through NetGalley, with many thanks.