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A review by lezreadalot
Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan
4.0
Two wrongs didn’t make a right, but occasionally they did make an escape.
This was just the absolute height of adorable. A caper! A romp! A really cute adventure with an irascible, rich, dgaf heroine who's had it up to HERE with terrible men, and a clever, poor, almost-pensioner with a scheme, who team up to best a really shitty dude, and fall in love along the way! And they're both like 70.
I have such a huge soft spot for later-in-life-love-stories, and cute old ladies are my catnip. This addressed some stuff that's been bugging me a lot these days: how older people (and in the era this is set in, especially older women) are constantly written off, ridiculed, treated like they're already dead, or halfway there, so who needs to care about them! Seeing how they both fight back against that, Bertrice with her take no shit, say and do whatever attitude, Violetta with her steely determination to survive, no matter what, was really really heartening. It was a short novella, but in it was just this great sense of... a will not only to survive, but live and enjoy life, take pleasure from it, live like you have decades left and be kind to people along the way.
(People who deserve kindness. So, not Terrible Nephews.)
The romance was sweet and well done, but I'll admit it: I did want more! Especially in terms of just like... the feeling of finding and becoming friends with another woman who loves women, talking about their situation in the framework of the larger society, the knowledge that it isn't the Norm. It's what I want out of a lot, if not all historical f/f romance, because exploring that always leads to great things in the emotions department. And... it was treated pretty casually here. Which wasn't bad? But I was a little disappointed.
But not by much! I loved this a lot, and will remember it fondly. 3.5 stars.
This was just the absolute height of adorable. A caper! A romp! A really cute adventure with an irascible, rich, dgaf heroine who's had it up to HERE with terrible men, and a clever, poor, almost-pensioner with a scheme, who team up to best a really shitty dude, and fall in love along the way! And they're both like 70.
I have such a huge soft spot for later-in-life-love-stories, and cute old ladies are my catnip. This addressed some stuff that's been bugging me a lot these days: how older people (and in the era this is set in, especially older women) are constantly written off, ridiculed, treated like they're already dead, or halfway there, so who needs to care about them! Seeing how they both fight back against that, Bertrice with her take no shit, say and do whatever attitude, Violetta with her steely determination to survive, no matter what, was really really heartening. It was a short novella, but in it was just this great sense of... a will not only to survive, but live and enjoy life, take pleasure from it, live like you have decades left and be kind to people along the way.
(People who deserve kindness. So, not Terrible Nephews.)
The romance was sweet and well done, but I'll admit it: I did want more! Especially in terms of just like... the feeling of finding and becoming friends with another woman who loves women, talking about their situation in the framework of the larger society, the knowledge that it isn't the Norm. It's what I want out of a lot, if not all historical f/f romance, because exploring that always leads to great things in the emotions department. And... it was treated pretty casually here. Which wasn't bad? But I was a little disappointed.
But not by much! I loved this a lot, and will remember it fondly. 3.5 stars.