A review by books_ergo_sum
Spinning Our Dreams: A Girton Girl's Guide to Fellows in Love by Anne Knight

emotional fast-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

The romance in this novella was great. And the SETTING?? 🥰🥰🥰

Years of pining, they were both in university (yes, her too!), they loved each other’s minds and our guy was so awkward about it. I felt so many feelings about this romance that when they had their first kiss, I cried. And I am not a book crier.

And the setting!! The best historical romance world building I’ve read in a long time. Possibly ever.

Because it was set at Cambridge University at an absolutely bonkers point in its history, the early 1880s. Cambridge fellows like our MMC weren’t allowed to marry (think, priest romance trope), female students like our FMC had to behave like nuns. “Town and Gown” tensions were high, especially since the university had its own private police force and workhouse prison (?!) that would arrest women from the town for even walking near campus—and the town police couldn’t do anything about it. 

The book felt simultaneously super sweet and super dangerous. And 0% cartoonish—there was something so human and complicated about the behaviours in this book.

And points for Authors Notes that come with a bibliography, always.