A great historical fiction that felt modern, but was still fun to read. I feel like i was missing out a bit by not reading the first book so I’ll pick that up soon.

Unfortunately I will be unable to give feedback on this book. I requested this book and had intentions of reading it. However my taste in books has changed and I do not feel that a review from me would do the book justice

I enjoyed this one a lot more than I did with reputation, however I couldn't get into either the way I really wanted to and it's such a shame as so many love this series.

I enjoyed this more than Reputation, I think because I had gotten a little more used to the writing style. I enjoyed the sapphic aspect to this book, which was much better done than in Reputation.

This is just not a book that will stick with me long term.

I was apprehensive about this as I don't tend to read novels of this genre and I hadn't read Reputation but I really enjoyed this, it was so fun and absorbing and great for anyone who still watches Pride and Prejudice (2005) on the reg.

I loved the premise of this book - a Regency romance with a Sapphic twist, the story of two friends realising their feelings for each other and set against a literary background. This was my first Lex Croucher book, but I'd definitely read more.

The story centres on Edith (Eddie) Millier, an aspiring novelist, and her best friend, Rose Li. Both are of an age where society expects them to find husbands, something Rose is prepared to do while Eddie pushes back at expectations placed upon her. Instead, she's seduced by an arty crowd, led by Byronic poet Nash Nicholson who offers to help getting her book published. When the whole group decamp to Nash's decrepit and decaying family estate, hedonistic parties ensure - but is that really what Eddie wants?

The relationship between the main characters is managed with subtlety by Croucher - as you'd expect, there's lots of misunderstandings between them as the path to true love is never smooth. Still, they seem well-rounded and believable characters, even as you wait for the penny to drop and for them to find each other.

Although I found Eddie a bit frustratingly naive, the strength of this novel for me was in the wider cast of characters. Nash might have his flaws (an understatement), but he was also witty and sharp. Other characters were presented much more warmly - I found that Albert, Kitty and Valentine grew on me as the novel progressed and I enjoyed the humorous repartee as the group navigated the crumbling country house falling down around them.

This is very much a modern take on a Regency romance so it was heartening to see LGBTQ+ and ethnic representation throughout. Readers in search of something traditional won't find it here, although the period detail is also well done. As a history buff, I always want more historical accuracy, but the premise of removing the characters to a remote house where society's rules didn't apply skirted some of the more obvious transgressions against decency that occurred.

Although the central romance seemed destined from the beginning, I was pleased that there was plenty of surprises in the plot - and some obstacles that I really didn't know how they were going to overcome. It's well plotted, although a little long in places. I did find the final scenes on the island with Henry a little confusing, but it didn't detract from the overall effect of the novel.

If you're after a smart, funny and fresh take on a Regency romance novel, this is the book for you. There's characters you'll love, others you'll love to hate, plenty of fun and bucket-loads of smashing Georgian society's rather stifling conventions.

Thanks to NetGalley for my review copy - and apologies for the late posting of my review.

This is the second book by lex croucher I have read and much like her previous novel this take historical fiction and makes it modern in a fun way. This book has the same feel as Bridgeton set in a regency era, but has more modern themes.

Lex Croucher’s voice and style are phenomenal. This book is gorgeous - funny, furious, romantic. Totally it’s own thing. Reading this was pure pleasure!

Aspiring writer Edith ‘Eddie’ Miller is the engaging heroine of Lex Croucher’s second novel. A kind of Regency Jo March, she is always trying to find a quiet corner to settle down and write, always interrupted by one or other members of her noisy, sprawling, affectionate family. “Her mother, it was whispered, had been exposed to far too many books from a young age, and it had engendered in her a curious mind and a lack of respect when it came to propriety for propriety’s sake”.
So it is entirely in character that when we meet Eddie, she and her dearest friend, Rose Li, are practising kissing in Eddie’s “rather halfhearted treehouse on the first chilly evening of a London September”. It is a funny, tender, charming scene that sets the tone for the entire book, and firmly establishes the characters of passionate, heart-on-her-sleeve Eddie and thoughtful, quietly uncompromising Rose.
But when Eddie’s literary hero, radical poet Nash Nicholson, invites her to one of his salons, her life takes quite an unexpected turn. Nicholson takes Eddie under his wing, promising to show her work to his literary agent and inviting her to spend time at his country retreat – a crumbling mansion on a remote, possibly haunted, lake island.
Here, all Eddie’s assumptions and beliefs are put to the test, and she is forced to confront her feelings for Rose – by now engaged to kindly (and almost middle-aged) Mr Albert Rednock – and the reality of Nash Nicholson’s intentions. Everything comes to a head at Nicholson’s ball, the description of which recalls reports of William Beckford’s Gothic-themed extravaganzas at Fonthill Abbey.
This is a story that demands to be read at one sitting: deliciously frothy, but at the same time addressing serious issues of gender politics, feminism and radical thought.

A joyous sapphic romp with regency sensibilities. You will fall completely in love with Eddie and Rose and even the motley crew in which they find themselves entangled..

I love the combination of a regency tale but with a modern twist and extra added queerness.

A promising extension of Lex Croucher’s work, as I really enjoyed Reputation previously. I can’t wait to read what Lex writes next! Gwen and Art and Trouble will be preordered in anticipation!

Read if you love:
• regency era
• sapphic MCs
• friends to lovers
• forbidden love
• historical romantic comedies
• queer side characters

Okaaaay, I was really looking forward to this one and while it had its good points, I was ultimately left feeling a little underwhelmed.

I’m always here for queer romances, especially historical which is kind of my little niche that rarely sees me manage to hunt down any books that fit both so obviously I was super excited for this one!

I liked the characters well enough, although poor Eddie…I did get a little frustrated with Eddie because I felt that Nash’s intentions were very obvious from the start and I was yelling at the book several times but the romance was sweet when it developed a little and Eddie does eventually stick it to Nash.

I was just disappointed there was nothing to be done but the epilogue with the news cuttings was satisfying enough.

I loved all of the rep and the discussions surrounding race, I liked the romance well enough and there were some fun moments I just found myself feeling a little indifferent towards this one. It felt a little lacklustre and I really did struggle about halfway through to keep going with it as I was a little bored but I’ll still be checking out the authors latest release!

This is a fun friends-to-lovers, Sapphic-style romance which has Regency style but modern sensibilities.

Main character Eddie reminded me very much of Louisa May Alcott’s Jo March in her manner, literary aspirations and determined ignorance of her best friend’s feelings towards her. Rose, on the other hand, was perfect in every way with no flaws at all – beautiful, wise, kind, understanding, patient, accepting, and so on and so on.

I love the banter between the two best friends throughout the story and would happily have continued reading long after the book ended just to read more of their ‘ordinary’ interactions.

The sex is more implied than explicit, with lots of kissing, nibbling and mooning, so nothing to offend delicate readers, although I imagine actual Regency readers might have turned a hair or two!

The tone starts of somewhat Jane Austen-ish at first – I could picture Nash and Albert as Bingley and Wickham! – but that old-fashioned air soon clears as the characters decamp to the lake house for some bohemian debauchery.

A really fun read, with a diverse bunch of characters, this book is almost guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.

Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

Loveeeed this one so much more than Reputation! A lot of drama, a lot of fun, and really likeable characters. I loved the rebellion against societies expectations and how these two characters develop and find themselves throughout this book.

Having previously read Reputation by Lex Croucher, I was really looking forward to Infamous and it did not disappoint! You can really see how Lex has grown as an author in such a short time so I can't wait to read more by them. The characters are fully formed and three-dimensional and I loved the historical setting. Queer representation is just so wonderful to see and Lex does it brilliantly.

A whirlwind of a queer Regency novel! The story of Eddie and her best friend who realise they love each other after lots of things get in the way. Would recommend for a quick, fun read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher.

What can i say except that i LOVED THIS BOOK!!

Funny, chaotic, heart-warming and binge worthy. I am a massive fan of Bridgeton so when i got the e-arc for this book i screamed. I’m so mad at myself for putting it off for as long as i did because i love this book, the characters and Eddie so much.

Will definitely be a book i read again and again and again.

I really enjoyed this Regency-set romantic comedy, which followed aspiring writer Eddie as she meets one of her writing heroes and then finds herself at one of his wild and bizarre house parties with an eclectic bunch of other writers and artists, all of whom with a sizeable contempt for society's rules and the importance of reputation, which seems to trouble Eddie much less than it does her best friend Rose, who goes along with her to keep an eye on her.

Although quite modern in language and feel, particularly with the inclusion of gay and gender non-conforming characters, I never felt that the book was not entirely set within the historical period in which it was meant to be in - the characters were free to be themselves only because they were on an island in the middle of the lake with like-minded individuals, and it was made very clear at several points throughout the story that elsewhere and throughout their lives they would have to make adaptations in order to meet societal expectations. I thought the direction that the story took was interesting, particularly the ending, and overall it was a really engaging and satisfying story, which was both a romance and a "coming-of-age", I suppose. I'm looking forwards to reading Lex Croucher's previous novel, and any future ones set in this genre.

I loved Lex Croucher's debut, and this novel is just as brilliant. She creates amazing characters and really grounds readers in the time period. I also really enjoyed the plot of this book and how Croucher created atmosphere. Another amazing read!

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: The author and I are social media moots; we have occasional bants.
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

I’ve written before about how … complicated it can get when you love one book in a series, or one particular work by an author. Thankfully, in the case of Infamous, it’s not complicated at all because I loved it EVEN MORE than I loved Reputation. With hindsight, I think I loved Reputation for its potential: I adored its exuberance, it’s defiance, it’s capacity for both darkness and light, even if sometimes, especially towards the end, it felt a bit tonally unbalanced. Infamous, though, is very much the realisation of Reputation’s potential. It has everything I loved about Reputation but … y’know BIGGER, HARDER, FASTER. Basically, Infamous is Fury Road to Reputation’s Mad Max. And I could not be more delighted or more impressed.

In my review of Reputation, I spoke a little of the ways it had the potential to be a little divisive among readers. I think it’s impossible, as an author or any creative professional, to completely insulate yourself from criticism, no matter how careful you are to avoid reader spaces. And, obviously, this too is complicated because if you refuse to accept criticism of any kind then that is ALSO a problem. It’s just public criticism comes at you with the randomness (and, occasionally, the brutality) of machine gun fire so it’s impossible to fully balance what is justified versus what is ill-intentioned, especially when aspects of the text will sometimes be perceived as flaws when they’re both fully intended and fully integral to what you’ve created.

I should emphasise, that I’m not saying it’s wrong not to like something about what someone is doing. But, to put it in the bluntest possible terms, if what you didn’t like about Reputation was its irreverence, its queerness, its diversity and its deliberate use of anachronism then you aren’t going to like Infamous either. Because it takes all those aspects from Reputation and it does them MORE. I don’t like to over-speculate, or indeed speculate at all, about what drives other authors: but, to me, this doubling down on aspects of Reputation that were controversial to some readers did not feel spiteful, defensive or resentful. It felt like a writer committed to their vision. And that, in turn, was a pleasure to experience as a reader.

(Although, speaking purely for myself, I do feel some kind of way about the general willingness to assert as just plain “wrong” books that use historical settings to explore marginalised experience, while texts that use historical settings to tell stories about straight white people are just assumed to be correct and appropriate, and never get called out on their biases.)

Anyway, the deal with Infamous is that our protagonist, Edith (Eddie) Miller, has been raised ‘unconventionally’ by her loving parents, alongside her siblings. Her best friend, Rose Li, is by nature and upbringing somewhat less unconventional, although the two young women have been devoted to each other since childhood. As they hover on the brink of adulthood, however, their priorities have begun to diverge: Eddie has always known she wanted to be a writer, and Rose seems to want nothing more than a conventional marriage. Then, frustrated with Rose (especially her engagement to a boring man in his thirties who breeds rabbits) and mainstream society in general, Eddie runs into one of her heroes: the romantic poet Nash Nicholson. He is immediately taken with her, encouraging her writerly ambitions, and ultimately invites her on a artist’s retreat to his family home. The family home turns out to be a decomposing wreck on an island but Eddie, and the other artists, do their best to work amidst Nash’s constant whims and dramas. Except this is barely the beginning of Eddie’s journey. Because, holy shit, does she have a lot to learn about life, love, art and—most of all—herself.

Much like Reputation, Infamous is a Bildungsroman and, while Eddie’s journey from innocence and ignorance to knowledge and understanding, doesn’t offer many surprises in its peaks and troughs, everything about it was, for me, pitch perfect. I should also take a moment to explain that I don’t mean “doesn’t offer many surprises” in a negative way: this is a story about growing up, it’s not a thriller, I wasn’t reading to be surprised, I was reading to be engaged. And engaged I was, deliciously and comprehensively. On top of which, Infamous’s adherence to the rhythms of its genre (a genre, by the way, was flourishing during the time the book is set) give the whole story a remarkable precision, both in terms of its arc and its pacing. Also, reading with my queer adult eyes, I got all the satisfaction of about a million fictional “I told you sos” and “I saw that coming” by the time Eddie figured her shit out.

Speaking of Eddie, I adored her. She is not the most sympathetic of heroines, nor I think is she intended to be, because she is relentlessly flawed, self-absorbed, and short-sighted when it comes to the people around her. But, to me at least, she was profoundly, wonderfully relatable, as much because of those flaws, rather than in spite of them. Her mistakes, her misjudgements, and her occasional straight detours into obnoxiousness always came across more understandable than condemnable: she is, after all, a confused seventeen year-old with big ambitions, who is more vulnerable than she realises, and feels somewhat alienated by her society. I think there will be readers to whom Eddie does not speak. But, frankly, you are wrong and I will fight you. Okay, I won’t. I do, actually, get any frustration with Eddie. But I think there’s something very … queer somehow, about her particular brand of obtuseness. That kind of helpless, thrashing ‘who I am, what does it mean, where I do fit’ bewilderment that some of us, ahem, don’t figure out until their late twenties at least.

The supporting cast is equally delightful. From Eddie’s lovingly rambunctious family (please give me a whole book about Beatrice, who became my instant favourite after this description: “a small girl with her dark hair gathered up on top of her head so that she resembled a very angry pineapple”) to Nash Nicholson’s circle of artists and radicals, there isn’t a single character who doesn’t fucking shine. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I personally really appreciated the fact that the world of Infamous feels very much a world where people have their own shit going on, shit that Eddie learns to be less oblivious to as the book progresses. I think this felt particularly true, and important, for Rose. Obviously it’s not for me to make judgements about whether Rose is a successful portrait of a Asian woman in the Regency. While Croucher never elides issues of social injustice (one of the supporting characters, Oluwadayo Akerele, is an abolitionist) or pretends micro-aggressions don’t exist, this isn’t a book that constantly subjects its marginalised characters to cruelty and aggression in the name of the sort of “historical accuracy” I’ve already noted I personally find messed up and, to be blunt, actively inaccurate.

On the surface, Rose seems a much more conventional character than Eddie. She wants to get married, she wants to be accepted by society, she cares about her reputation and, indeed, about being kind to other people, in ways Eddie just doesn’t. But we are also seeing Rose from Eddie’s exceptionally unreliable perspective. We learn, almost incidentally, that Rose’s father is deeply involved in helping Chinese immigrants find homes and jobs in England, and there’s a degree to which, I think, we are expected, as readers, to understand that Eddie can buck against her society precisely because there is no question that she belongs within it. Rose, by contrast, cannot take that for granted. I did not personally see this as Rose rejecting her Asian heritage so much as growing up with an understanding of the world that Eddie lacks. They are both in their way rebellious people, it’s just that Rose has learned to rebel in useful ways, to make compromises around her identity that create spaces for her to be safe and happy, whereas Eddie—at least at the beginning of the book—is just loud in her discontents.

There’s no getting away from the fact that Eddie does less to ‘deserve’ Rose than perhaps she should or could. In terms of wake up calls, Eddie figuratively sleeps through about three different alarms over the course of the book. But, again, the book is a Bildungsroman: there’s romance in it (and a gorgeous HEA that made me literally hug my kindle), but learning is the key to the story. Reading between the lines of Eddie’s self-absorption, it’s pretty clear that Rose is doing plenty of learning of her own: it’s just she’s already knowing herself and knowing in the world, her journey looks very different to Eddie’s. Once again, your mileage may vary, but I was very much rooting for both of them. Eddie may have spent about half of the book clueless, but the connection between her and Rose is undeniable, with the sharply perceptive Rose perfectly able to hold her own against Eddie’s haphazard charisma, and their mutual chemistry … well *fans self historically accurately*.

Since I’m talking characters, I should also spare a few lines for Nash Nicholson, little though he deserves them. Basically, with Nash, I think Croucher pulls off an almost impossible feat—which is to say, he’s a genuinely charming piece of shit, and writing genuinely charming pieces of shit is actually really hard. Mostly when you read about a piece of shit who is supposed to be charming, he’s not charming at all, and you suspend belief on behalf of the character being taken-in because otherwise they just look way too credulous. In the case of Nash Nicholson, while he’s clearly bad news from the outset, red flags flying high from every parapet (I mean, he insists on calling Eddie, Edie, not Eddie, and claims to see that she’s a talented writer without ever looking at a single thing she’s written), he’s also … he’s just annoyingly entertaining.

“The library was enormous […] It had the air of a cathedral, something venerated and quietly holy - until Nash sneezed very loudly and then said, “For fuck’s sake.”
“This is amazing.”
“Apparently it is where we store all of the dust.”

I still resent the amount of times he made me laugh out loud—despite being a terrible person. It’s telling, I think, that even Nash’s dark backstory is ultimately a tragedy that belongs to other people.

The only character I wished there’d been a little more to was Valentine, Nash’s nonbinary friend. They get, to be fair, some wonderfully funny lines and some rather heartbreaking ones, but mostly they just lounge around, providing exposition about Nash and his wife. Given, as I mentioned earlier, that the book seems to go out of its way to create a sense that its supporting cast, especially the most marginalised members of it, have their own thing going on, I couldn’t quite understand why Valentine seems to have nothing better to do with their life than follow Nash around, even knowing Nash is a complete cockweasel, who cheats on his wife, and exploits seventeen-year-olds. I mean, I’m not saying nonbinary people are morally bound to make sensible choices about their friends—and Valentine does admit to Eddie that they feel lost within their life in general—but there was never any explanation for their loyalty to Nash and they felt like the only character without a context of their own. And I’m well-aware how … awkward it is for me to be reflecting on this, given the author is themself nonbinary. I should make it clear that I’m not saying they did nonbinary wrong (that is not a judgement anybody gets to make about anything, regardless of identity): I just felt, in terms of their place in the narrative, that Valentine, for all they were delightful, seemed to have no life that wasn’t Nash. And while that could well have been a deliberate choice, it left me sad for them in ways I didn’t want to be sad, and in ways the book hadn’t prepared me to be sad.

And, omg, I’m writing an essay here. The final thing I wanted to mention is that Infamous is, amongst its other themes, a book about art, and writing in particular. Being a writer who writes about writing is … complicated (and one of the reasons, I think, why I tend to write writers who are absolute hacks) because it can feel kind of crass to be exalting the thing you are yourself doing. Like everything else on the planet, how you feel about Infamous’s exploration of art is going to be subjective. Me? I really loved it. I think it helps that, while Eddie is talented and dedicated, she is never shown to be a extraordinary or particular genius. Most relevantly, writing is shown to be something she has to, y’know, *do*: it requires thought and commitment and, above all else, time, which reflects my own approach to writing and my experiences “as a writer” (whatever that means). It may, of course, not reflect yours. Even fucking Nash has his moments, like this annoyingly realistic little gem as he discusses trying to construct one of his poems:

“Love, sex, Aphrodite, Eros, death . . . It might as well be an instruction manual about how to build a ship, I spent enough time studying vessel plans to eke out horrible little metaphors and turns of phrase that made me want to vomit.”

I mean yes. That moment when you’re trying to say a thing that should be simple and so you research it half to death and then it ends up just completely sucking? That’s such a fucking mood.

The other thing I really appreciated about Eddie’s writing was the role Rose plays in it. While others are only too willing to exploit Eddie or manipulate her relationship with her art, Rose—while not mindlessly uncritical (What on earth does this mean?? she had written next to a line that described somebody’s personality as ‘foaming’. ‘You know,’ Eddie said indignantly later. ‘Sparkling! Effervescent!’ ‘Eddie, if you write that she’s foaming, everybody is going to think the poor thing’s gone rabid.’)—is unfailingly supportive, encouraging, and honest. Basically, the best writing friend any writer could wish for, and I love that the book celebrates the value of that relationship. Because writing, in my experience, needs a Rose as much as it needs an Eddie.

I need to wrap this up or I’ll break Goodreads. Basically, this book felt for me in so many ways. It made me laugh and clutch at it. I cringed and swooned and absolutely gloried in its wit, its compassion, its beauty, and its wicked sense of the absurd. In other words, I LOVED IT WITH MY WHOLE SOUL IT HAS MY WHOLE HEART which is the sort of thing I’ve always sworn I’d never write in a review. But I’m saying it now to show just how fucking serious I am about this book. If it was a person, I’d break up with my current partner to be with it.

It also contains a scene in which a duck defecates on the head of small child.

10/10

This has had rave reviews, but it didn't quite work for me. The writing style was a little too modern. If you are looking for a less traditional Regency romp, this definitely fits the bill!