The joy of browsing the library shelves is happening across new authors, or series, or just random books. Of course, not all the books which look exciting fulfill their promise.

Notorious is the first in a series of Regency inspired romances by Minerva Spencer, claiming to subvert Regency norms and expectations.

It has a heroine (Drusilla) not dreaming of marriage, and a rake for a hero (Gabriel). They don’t – apparently – like each other. But then Gabriel rescues Drusilla from a compromising situation with a scoundrel, forcing them to marry before Society scorns heiress Drusilla. There’s also the small matter of a challenge being issued between Gabriel and the scoundrel, so maybe Drusilla won’t be married for long.

The duel is wide-spread knowledge throughout Society, the challenge having been issued in a fairly public place, at a ball, in front of, well, all the atendees. Agonising about it takes up more time than I thought necessary, and I kept waiting for someone (Drusilla, maybe) to lay information with the appropriate authorities (or for the appropriate authorities to just turn up, since basically everyone in London seems to know the details of it). It’s 1817, after all, when duelling was, technically, illegal, even if it wasn’t strictly enforced (and still occasionally happened for another fifty or so years). A secret one, such as happens in whichever Poldark novel, sure; one so public the ordinary person on a London street knows about it? Really? Stretched credulity.

The date was also an issue, but only because of the short extract of Book 2 in the series at the end, which was dated 1816 but describes events happening at the end of Book 1 with other characters. I had to flip back and forth to make sure I had read the dates correctly.

Naturally, of course, Drusilla and Gabriel discover that their marriage of convenience is actually a love-match, although I’d lost interest in both of them by the time they do. Long since. I wasn’t too interested in any of the secondary characters either.

I’ll be honest, the duel is, really, the only bit of it that I really remember, mostly because I was waiting for the knock at the door from a magistrate. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t come. Sadly nor was there a death and subsequent fleeing for the continent. I don’t think I’ll be reading the others in the series. Although it did perform marginally better than another, An Unsuitable Earl, I think it was called, which I decided not to finish, it was too ghastly. I sought refuge in Georgette Heyer’s Frederica.