It hurts my heart to give this book 1 star... On one level, this just shows how much of a hypocrite I am. Because a low-angst rom-com historical romance between two Nice People in novella form? Fun.

In full length novel form? Not my thing. Idk! There’s just not enough going on. Their character arcs bore me because they start the book too Good. The romance plot doesn’t squeeze my heart because two blandly perfect people falling for each other—who cares? And low-angst plots don’t have enough drama to keep me entertained (does wishing that this was a love triangle instead make me a bad person? 😆) But that’s not a one star problem—more like a three star (two star, max) problem.

My real issue with the book was its politics.

First, I found our ‘politically radical’ heroine really alienating. I’m a bit of a leftwing nut, I went into politics, and I review books by controversial leftwing figures on here… but I’m not even 1% as politically out of step with my society as this heroine was in her time. She advocated for things like universal suffrage and abolishing the aristocracy—in England. Just after the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic wars.

And yet she felt no mental anguish about how different her political beliefs were from everyone around her?? Can’t relate 😅

Secondly, the spy/mystery plot in here was very COINTELPRO-coded (aka, domestic surveillance, infiltrating advocacy groups, and shutting down political dissent). And yet our heroine helped them?? It made no sense. A) our heroine was just as much of a threat to the Crown as the ‘bad guys’ so the government should’ve gone after her too. And B) the bad guys and our heroine had political beliefs that weren’t *that* different. Why didn’t she feel conflicted about sending her comrades to the gallows?

I wanted better representation for how political progressiveness ::feels::. Even in a rom-com historical.