This review contains affiliate links, which earn me a small commission when you click and purchase, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business and allowing me to continue providing you a reliable resource for clean book ratings.
What do you get when you combine a Victorian-era romance with pirates, independent ladies and magic that makes houses fly? You get a very strange mixture that sounds like it would never work but actually, surprisingly, does.
Cecilia Bassingthwaite has been trained by her maiden great-aunt to be the ideal Victorian lady. She has also been trained to be a darn good pirate. Cecilia is skilled at stealing items large and small, pickpocketing, and killing with various weapons. She hopes to become a full-fledged member of the Wisteria Society, prim and proper ladies who also happen to steal most of the fine things they own, put out hits on each other (nothing personal), and fly their houses around as needed. They use magic to pilot the houses (which stand in for pirate ships), and each domicile is generally soundly fortified and stocked with weapons.
Cecilia meets Ned Lightbourne when he warns her he has been hired to kill her. But their obvious mutual attraction is such that he never can bring himself to do it. His employer (well, one of them) is the wicked Captain Morvath, biological son of Branwell Bronte, whose pirate ship/home is a gigantic gothic abbey. He feels wronged in many ways and is particularly determined to rid England of its presumptuous women. That means targeting the Wisteria Society, for starters.
Cecilia and Ned end up in a tenuous partnership to defeat Morvath and anyone else who wants to kill them or steal from them. Cecilia hopes to save her beloved aunt and the other Wisteria Society members and prove to them she is ready to join their ranks officially. Ned, well, his motives are unclear. But he clearly is falling for Cecilia, and she for him. But it seems impossible they can end up together, given all that’s against them.
The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels is a very clever and witty book with a hodgepodge of influences and fun references to anything Bronte and little current-day asides. (Look for a phrase that alludes to Star Wars, for instance!) I think I’d wholeheartedly recommend it but for the unexpected turn that it took into decidedly erotic territory (definitely a romance book for adults at that point).
Rated: High. Profanity includes one or two uses of strong language, a few instances of moderate profanity, around 25 uses of mild language, and 20 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes regular double entendres and underhand remarks that get increasingly crude and more overt. There are some kissing scenes and then a couple of sex scenes that are surprisingly long and detailed. Violence includes fighting and killing, mostly offhand pirate-style.
Click here to purchase your copy of The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels on Amazon.
