My new favorite installment in the Belvoir's Library series from Alexandra Vasti! Thank you to St. Martin's Griffin for an advanced reader's copy of Ladies in Hating. The set-up for this story is so delicious, our gothic novelist, Georgiana, returns from her previous appearances in the series, and now, several years later, is at a midpoint in her career and has grown increasingly suspicious of one rival novelist in particular. The opening scene is genuinely hilarious, and it perfectly sets up the Tessa-Dare-esque balance that Vasti always strikes between quick, witty dialogue and emotionally resonant inner monologue. Both Dare and Vasti will always make you laugh, but they will inevitably leave you weeping at the end, fair warning. This hits so many of my favorite HR beats - class difference, rivals-to-lovers, your childhood crush grows up and oh shit they're so annoyingly hot you hate them for it, ice queen melts in real time, ice queen gets a diminutive NICKNAME and it's ADORABLE, there's-only-one-ruined-manor, meddling Quakers, etc. etc. etc. What makes this an easy five-star read for me is the additional depth to Georgiana's internal conflict and the reflections on family and acceptance. I can get frustrated with a conflict that depends too heavily on self-flagellation, but when that conflict reveals a deeper fear of rejection and an internalized ocean of longing, then it makes a heck of a lot more sense to me. It works SO well here, and resolves beautifully for all involved. I felt the feels I felt at the end of Devil Comes Courting, by Courtney Milan, and if you know, you know. 

Also this is really hot? I should mention that it's really hot.