The Lady's Guide was one of my favorite books of the year. It was intelligent and romantic and everything I wanted in a romance. Waspish Widows, unfortunately, did not live up to its predecessor.

This second installment in the series focused very heavily on the politics of the time, but, to be honest, not in an interesting way. The emphasis on divorce felt a little bit like small potatoes given the lack of universal suffrage, and the beekeeping ended up being too technical for the most part to be enjoyable. Part of what I loved about Lady's Guide was that the main characters got together fairly early and that the book was more about them being together, but Waspish Widows fell into ye olde romance format and I feel like it suffered. I'm still going to pick up the next book in the series, but it will be with much lower expectations.