RULES FOR RUIN

The attraction between Effie Flite and Gabriel Royce is offset by the magnitude of their competing interests in a high-stakes historical tango.

As outsiders infiltrating the upper echelons of London society with competing political agendas, Effie and Gabriel are fascinated and alarmed when they meet. Effie is masquerading as an aristocratic young lady on the marriage market though she’s really a penniless orphan from the slums of St. Giles and protégé of the mysterious Miss Corvus. In a brilliant reimagining of the infamously jilted Miss Havisham of Great Expectations, instead of having her simply wasting away in a mansion stuck in time, Miss Corvus trains girls to push England forward by becoming undercover activists in the service of women’s rights. Effie is her first and greatest pupil, tasked with bringing down the villainous Viscount Compton who opposes reforming the married women’s property bill, the crux of the legal and financial subjugation of women. “Compton must be destroyed,” Corvus instructs Effie, “His ruination will be the salvation of this proposal.” While Effie’s feminine charms are her weapon, “influence was currency to Gabriel. He knew how to wield it. To weaponize it.” He gains power through his betting shop, using his aristocratic clients’ debts and the intel on them he hoards as leverage to compel their support for improving living conditions in the Rookery, the slum he was raised in. One of those aristocrats is Lord Compton, and Gabriel’s success hinges on him remaining in power. Like her peers Courtney Milan and Alyssa Cole, Matthews deftly blends social history with epic love stories. As Effie and Gabriel’s attraction and conflicts bloom, readers gain a window into struggles over class and gender in late 19th-century England.

Readers who like a streak of danger and politics in their romance will thrill to this whip-smart historical.