I haven’t read any of the Maiden Lane books, although they’ve been on my to-read list for years, but this caught my attention enough to read out of order.

(I asked around, and readers who’ve read it and the rest said I’d be okay, but just to know that Valentine has been the villain of the series)

Bridget Crumb is the housekeeper, but more specifically, she’s the best housekeeper in London. And she for the time being, is the Duke of Montgomery’s housekeeper. She’s a bastard, and her birth mother has asked her to help her find something that the Duke of Montgomery is using to blackmail her.

Bridget can’t deny her mother, so she agrees. And of course Val, who was exiled from England, walks in on her looking for something in his bed. He never really planned on leaving London, so he decides to blackmail the king into letting him stay. I can see where he must have been the bad guy before,

But this book is so much more than a duke falling for his housekeeper.

And Bridget is so much more than just a housekeeper. She is a fantastic heroine. She’s strong and stubborn, yet also she knows when to bend. She also discovers the best ways to handle Val, and she never tries to change him. But because of that, I think, he does change. And he finds himself falling for his housekeeper. And she finds herself completely in love with a man who is blackmailing her mother. How can this ever work out?

I don’t know how this author turned Val around, I can almost certainly see how he would be the perfect villain. He’s cold, but decadent. Deceitful, yet not…rather he’s tricky. He might be selfish and arrogant, but really, which duke wasn’t? He’s such a complicated hero, and he made a wonderful hero at that!

I found this book to be intriguing, beguiling, and exciting. The author has created such a beautiful world full of rich and vivid characters, that I really want to just binge-read the whole series.

***ARC courtesy of Grand Central Books

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