Manchester industrialist William Rose was a poor lad from the slums who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, but in order to achieve his greatest ambitions he must become the epitome of Victorian respectability: a family man so he needs a wife. But the only woman who's caught his eye is sophisticated beauty Octavia Marshall, one of the notorious ladies of Carson Street. Though she was once born to great wealth and privilege, she's hardly respectable, but she's determined to forge a new life as an entirely proper businesswoman. The pair forge a deal William will be her tutor & teach her about business & she will act as his fake fiancée.
This is the third & final part of the trilogy it could easily be read on its own. I loved both William & Octavia, he’s caring & totally invested in making his employees lives better, she’s running from her past. Their attraction sizzles from their first meeting however it’s their verbal bantering that’s a highlight of the book. The road to their HEA isn’t straightforward & troubles at Carson Street don’t help. A well written captivating & interesting read
My honest review is for a special copy I voluntarily read

2.5 stars rounded up

I really didn't care for this book and wasn't thrilled to learn the heroine was a prostitute - not that that should matter, but it doesn't make sense that a man looking to make a beneficial match would marry her.

Anyway, it just wasn't for me - but it was very well written.

A Very Modern Marriage by Rachel Brimble is a compelling historical novel set in 1852. It is the third book in the Ladies Of Carson Street series but can be read as a stand-alone. This was my first visit to Carson Street.
The reader witnesses the powerful bond between the three women living in a house on Carson Street. The house is a safe place as the women look out for each other’s welfare. Each woman has been rescued from a life on the streets.
We see a character unable to forgive herself and her father. She escaped domestic abuse but blames herself. No one needs to berate her as she does it herself. She needs to learn to forgive the face in the mirror.
In complete contrast we see that she is also a strong woman wanting to lift herself out of poverty and learn business.
The reader travels from the wealthy streets of Bath to the textile mills in the poor areas of Manchester. There are some philanthropic hearts wanting to improve working hours and conditions for the mill workers.
We see that the richest people are not those with the most money but those with love in their hearts. Shared goals and much love bring true riches to a family. A family may be blood related or joined together by circumstance and love.
I really enjoyed A Very Modern Marriage. This was my first book by Rachel Brimble. I look forward to much more by her.
I received a free copy from Rachel’s Random Resources via Net Galley. A favourable review was not required. All opinions are my own.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an early review copy.

William is a mill owner whose in Bath to find more investors. But, it’s not easy to find them or if he does, they don’t want to do business with him, as he is a in married man. Then he meets Octavia at The Carson Street House and he finds himself attracted to her, as she’s got both intelligence and strength,. Octavia cones to a decision that she wants to learn about how to run a business and thinks she can learn a lot from William through the way he runs his mills as well as finding a way to make her future secure, away from what she’s doing now.

But it seems her past still has a hold over her, as she keeps thinking about her motivations and whether she’s being selfish. Her relationships with Nancy and Louisa I really liked and they face a few unexpected problems. It felt a bit sad how both Nancy and Louisa made Octavia feel she was turning her back in them just because she wanted to find a better future for herself and making out that William was the one behind her doing this.

This wasn’t a historical romance, but it was still a well-researched and written story. The relationships were interesting of all the characters.

Highly Recommend This Series.

I received a free copy from NetGalley and this is my freely given review.

Well I went about this one backwards. I have not read the two novels in this series prior, so this was not what I expected. I will definitely have to read the first two, and maybe get back to this one to look at with different eyes. I was not expecting a novel about a prostitute in Victorian Bath. The Carson St. House is a discreet brothel, run by a widow. Octavia is one of the prostitutes and friend of the widow. Two of the ladies of the house, including the aforementioned widow (heroine of book 1), have managed to find love, and the book opens at the wedding of one of them (Nancy, lead in book 2). These changes in life seem to propel the heroine in book 3, Octavia, to re-evaluate her life at this point. She ended up prostituting because of an untenable home life that appears to have left some lasting psychological scars, and she seems to want to make a change to gain some stability and perhaps some level of respect too, especially if the brothel is no more.

The hero of the book, William Rose, is a modern-thinking mill owner, who is in Bath to drum up investors. He has pulled himself and his family out of poverty to become a wealthy Manchester cotton mill owner, and prides himself on being more forward thinking than his peers by giving fair wages, safer work places, longer breaks, etc for his workers. But he is frustrated as some of his potential investors choose not to do business with him because of his unmarried state. He and Octavia meet, and he is attracted to her and her intelligence and strength, and he intrigues her. She decides she wants to learn from his business acumen, as a route out of whoring and towards a more secure future, and he agrees, so long as she pretends to be his fiancee, to help him secure some of his business dealings.

Her past seems to colour her behaviour quite a bit. I find that Octavia castigates her behaviour and motivations to be selfish, and it seems that perhaps this stems from her family history, since I would not deign to label a desire for a more stable, secure future as selfish necessarily, even if it means leaving Carson St. I liked the dynamic of her friendship with the other Carson St. ladies, Nancy and Louisa. They obviously love each other, but there are definite bumps in the road, as in real life. I did not like how they seemed to be trying to make her feel disloyal or guilty for wanting to try something new and secure her future, though I could understand their distrust of William, as he seems to have become a strong influence for life change in such a very short time and acquaintance.

Also, there was the interesting backstory of running a brothel and being a prostitute in Victorian England, and how little women had when it came to finances and security, and the social prejudices at the time.

Octavia and William's relationship was not a light-hearted journey of attraction, romance, love, but it was an interesting push and pull dynamic of attraction, self doubt, and learning about each other and their own selves. I found myself intrigued, and frustrated by the hipocrisy, and it gave me some food for thought too. It was not historical romance I expected, but that is a good thing. There was some sex, after all, this was a series where the central characters were prostitutes at a whorehouse, but it was definitely a sideline, not a central focus. But it definitely had some interesting relationships, and dynamics. Not just between the two main characters, but also the contrasting familial relationships demonstrated, the business relationships, societal relations, and the friendship amongst the Carson St. ladies. I definitely have to put the other two books on my to-read list, if I have not already.

A 3.75 stars out of 5 stars.

Spoiler Alert:
I am very sorry, but the title of the book did not match the story at all. The main characters were not married, to each other or other parties. And the other couples, one was married and the other couple bickered about everything before getting married. The main couple was composed of a prostitute that wanted out of the "business" to become a business woman and a mill owner from Northern England. If I remember correctly, the people from Northern England were supposed to be not as friendly, critical and conservative. But his parents accepted her without a question. Now, if he was going to marry her in order for his business to improve, why would he think an ex-prostitute would be the way to go? From what I recall of historical romance, once a woman is a prostitute, she has to have a new identity. And the heroine was from a society family,so her abusive father would recognize her. I see too many pit falls in this relationship and story to have an easy heart when it was finished. I was worried for the heroine and the repercussions it would have on her marriage and children if people found out she was an ex-prostitute.
The story also alluded to, but never took on safe working conditions for mill workers. The hero supposed was passionate about giving his workers safer and better working conditions, but it was never done. The hero needed to put up or shut up. Trying to get a social justice into the story was a major fail.
The story was well written with appropriate language and content. But the overall story just did not check off any boxes for me. I felt delusioned and told things that were not par for the time period. I am sorry that I cannot recommend this book and give 1 star.

I was hoping this would be something like north and south by Elizabeth Gaskell, and although there are some similarities in our hero’s business, and how our heroine feels about conditions in mills in Manchester, that is where the similarities end. This is basically a story about how a prostitute and her John fall in love, with it doesn’t tell you in the blurb. Had I known what the story was about I quite honestly wouldn’t have bothered reading it, but it was an ok read, though highly unbelievable with the attitudes of our heroine, as other readers have pointed out

I just couldn’t warm up to this story which is, apparently, the third in a series of three prostitutes in Victorian England who find true love. The premise is that William Rose, a mill owner who has built up his very successful business from being a poor child worker, is finding trouble winning over investors in his business because he’s not married. I found that hard to believe. Then he meets Octavia when he visits her brothel. She wants to leave that path and become a businesswoman. They make an agreement that he will teach her about business if she’ll pretend to be his fiancée. It is all so unlikely. His teaching her is mostly her sitting in on a meeting and visiting his mills in northern England. I think there is more to learning how to manage a business, especially for an inexperienced woman of that time period. There isn't even any discussion of what kind of business she might open. And what does William think will happen with his fake engagement after his family has learned to love her and his business connections have met her? It was all just too unlikely. And it got quite repetitive with Octavia’s two friends being sad about her leaving the business and moving away with a guy she just met.

I voluntarily reviewed an advanced reader copy of this book that I received from Netgalley; however, the opinions are my own and I did not receive any compensation for my review.

In A Very Modern Marriage by Rachel Brimble, William Rose is visiting Bath. He is a pulled-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps hero who is now a wealthy industrialist. But he's finding that his business dealings are being thwarted as a single man as investors and partners wish for a "stable" man as indiciated by married men. William wants marriage but he wants security for his present and future family first. He collides with Octavia Marshall, a high end "notorious" lady, when he is forced to visit Carson St with his friends. They rapidly form a connection and begin a flirtation that becomes driven by Octavia's need to learn about business and change her path...not because she wants to give up sex work but because her closet friends in the brothel are getting married. My mind kind of hurt at this.

The writing is polished and the characters complex and one can tell the author has thought through them deeply. However, that's still not the same as them making sense--there was too much modern in this novel that didn't hold true to the time. (Also, it was more aptly titled A Very Modern Fake Engagement. for 99% of the novel.) Above all it was way, way, way too modern. First as a reader, I was dropped into assuming I understood Carson street and that it was a brothel (admittedly that flew by me when I'd scanned the synopisis). So that caused a rapid reorientation. Second, the women seemed way, way, way too blase as sex workers, until the very end. It was very hard to assume that Octavia, as a well-bred young lady, would act as self-assured as she did in so many ways when it was apparent throughout that she had supposedly scrapped so hard until the madame had saved her. She was even allegedly a street sex worker in alleys! There was no indication really that these interactions affected her in any way...or any of the other characters. There was no concern about disease or preganancy. Perhaps that's covered in the earlier novel(s)? That said, they might as well as have been young women who were notoriously working as accounting clerks in a traditionally male domain who then got raided because they allegedly committed fraud. It really, honestly, would not have made much difference to the novel..

Thank you to Netgalley and Aria for providing this advanced reader's copy.