readandburied | A Lily Among Thorns by Rose Lerner (Reply)

London 1815, just before Waterloo...

After her noble father disowned her, Lady Serena Ravenshaw clawed her way from streetwalker to courtesan to prosperous innkeeper. Now she’s feared and respected from one end of London to the other, by the lowest dregs of the city’s underworld and the upper echelons of the beau monde, and she’ll do anything to keep it that way.

When mild-mannered chemist Solomon Hathaway turns up in her office, asking for her help, she immediately recognizes him from one fateful night years before. She’s been watching and waiting for him for years—so she can turn the tables and put him in her debt, of course, and not because he looked like an angel and was kind to her when she needed it most.

She’s determined not to wonder what put that fresh grief in his eyes. But after a betrayal even Serena didn’t expect, she must put aside her pride and work with Solomon to stop a ring of French spies and save her beloved inn, her freedom—and England itself.

A Lily Among Thorns is a standalone  Regency romance from Rose Lerner following Solomon Hathaway, a chemist and fabric dyer, and Lady Serena Ravenshaw, a former sex worker who’s now a hotel owner and terror to all who cross  her. Many years ago, he gave her the money she needed to start a new life, and now he’s come to seek  her help in finding stolen family heirlooms. Unfortunately, he’s arrived during one of the worst months in Serena’s life, so it might be trickier than either of them suspected. It’s funny, charming, and heartbreaking in equal measure, with an unexpected number of crime bosses and attempted murders.

Full review available at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

[Caution warning: period-typical homophobia, mentions of suicidal inclinations, sexual harassment, mentions of abuse]