Charlotte gets a Bachelorette-style house party to find a husband, a silk mill to run, a mother with gambling debts to bail out, and a second-chance love interest with unprocessed grief. Ok phew that’s a lot of book. Rachel Griffiths clearly has range and I appreciated the ambition, but I kept putting this down bc I’d lose the thread between plotlines. The silk mill angle is genuinely interesting and Charlotte-as-businesswoman is a great premise, but it feels like it needs to be in a different book than the suitor competition bc neither one fully gets the attention it needs in one book.

Charlotte herself I loved. She’s consistent all the way through, refuses to compromise on who she is, and never turns into a different person bc a man is watching. Wolfgang’s grief over his brother and his guilt about the title could have been a real emotional core, but the book doesn’t give it enough space, and Charlotte doesn’t engage with it enough for it to land the way it should. The banter is bantering and the jealousy is simmering , and when these two are actually in a room together the chemistry is there.

4 stars and I’ll be curious where Griffiths takes the delightful other characters next!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.