I wish I owned a physical copy of this book so I could stare in wonder at this cover all day. ( )

What a great installment in the Feminine Pursuits series! I loved the setting, loved the swindle and the thoughtful presentation of how damaging a swindle can be, loved learning more about labor history in the weaving mills and about the history of the piano. It's one of the great strengths of the series -- not just the wonderful romances, but also the very realistic and well researched backgrounds of the characters. Almost none of them are upper class, and they reflect a rich history.

Advanced Readers' Copy provided by Edelweiss. ( )

2.5 stars

Her father may have begun to recover from Mr. Verrinder’s fraud. But Sophie still had a long, long way to go.

The Roseingrave family have moved from London to Carrisford after falling prey to a swindler. Their oldest daughter Sophie feels at fault for not seeing what was happening and this has led her to step away from her music playing. When she sees what looks like some woman about to be taken advantage of she tries to step-in.
Maddie Crewe is angry at seeing her friends and family being taken advantage of, so with their help, she's running a swindle on the biggest perpetrator, Mr. Giles. When a new woman in town inadvertently almost endangers it and then catches on, she has to trust her instincts and attraction with letting her in.

This woman was how she’d imagined every cruel heartbreaker in every old ballad she’d ever heard. If you were lucky, you pined away for love of her. If you weren’t lucky, you won her, lost her, and were damned. Here was Sophie, craving damnation.

The Hellion's Waltz is third in the Feminine Pursuits series, I haven't read the first two but I never had a sense of being lost starting here. We're first introduced to Sophie's musical family, her former opera singer mother, piano builder father, and musically inclined siblings, Sophie herself plays the piano and composes music. The story and characters take on this musical vibe, I thought the beginning gave us the talented orchestra, laid out the movements, but the second half and ending finished in a diminuendo.

Madeleine Crewe was a ribbon weaver and the current chairwoman of the Carrisford Weavers’ Library (formerly Weavers’ Library and Reform Society, changed for prudence’s sake when the magistrates had started to look askance at any group with the word reform in their name).

The story was led more by Sophie and her issues with emotionally and financially recovering from a swindler. Pairing her with Maddie and having Maddie in the process of a swindle provided a great opportunity for some angst. However, this an Avon Impulse print, which means you'll get more heat and to it quicker. The moral quandaries are dealt with pretty swiftly from Sophie's side and she is mentally lusting after Maddie from first sight and their physical relationship starts around forty percent, the same time Maddie lets Sophie in on the scheme. Sophie had a passion in her to be a star performer and Maddie saw that she was living her life in the way she thought her mom would, not in the way Maddie wanted to, and in-between and with those wants and desires, they connected. Even though this is an Impulse, I still felt like they hadn't spent enough time together on page or have that relationship development I need to emotionally believe and connect with them. I felt like I had just been lulled into the world and then was jarred with the suddenness of the explicit love scenes.

“It’s good to have friends in times like these,” she said. Her thumb curved underneath their twined fingers and stroked Sophie’s palm. “Friends with strong hearts— and beautiful hands.”

Maddie was a strong character and I almost found myself wishing the story had been led more by her, she's the one that is from Carrisford and is connected to the townspeople (secondary characters). The characters and world the author created was my favorite part as they breathed such life into the setting. There's also a sense of time with not only mentions of the Combination and Spitalfields Acts and Peterloo but connections with the characters and how they affected them, gave such depth to the characters and world. There was also a little story woven in about the legend of a “Jenny Hull” that had such weightiness to it and connection to some of the characters, that this small additive just about stole the show for me.

It was an enormous idea, so big she’d never dared to dream it on her own. To play before the king and his courtiers— to perform her own pieces, and take students of her choice, at rates that were enough to support herself— to be part of a society of knowledge and talent and passion for music . . . To hold nothing back. And to have what she wanted most in the world.

The swindle itself, started off dancing but felt almost forgotten at times, then dragged on in the latter half, started to become overly complicated, and finally landed without much oomph for me. The romance lacked oomph for me also, Sophie's feelings didn't quite develop beyond lusty and Maddie's final decision to give us the happily ever after didn't have the emotional development or foundation that makes my heart beat in these moments. I did feel the love in Sophie's relationship with her father, I thought it brought such warmth to the pages, what I was missing in the more heated romantic relationship. At around fifty percent I felt like I was reading two stories, the two parts of plot and relationship building weren't gelling for me; this was a good story but not necessarily a strong romance. You will, however, delight in the title after you finish the book.

“You, my love, are a nightingale.” ( )

Pianist Sophie Roseingrave and her family have just moved to Carrisford to start over after a charming con man cost them their family store. When Sophie witnesses a local merchant get taken in by a different scheme, she is determined not to let anyone else suffer what her family has just gone through. Unfortunately the con is being run by the beautiful weaver Maddie Crewe and their attraction is immediate. When Maddie confides in Sophie that the scheme is to bring down a petty tyrant of a man in order to stop his abuses and fund a weaver’s strike, their attraction blooms into something more.

Olivia Waite has a talent for bringing her characters to life and The Hellion’s Waltz is no exception. Sophie is the daughter of a tradesman who is overcoming the trauma of being conned while trying to figure out her future. Maddie is a silk weaver who was raised at the knee of a Reformist mother who recently passed. While they come from very different backgrounds, both women are working to recover from their recent traumas when they meet, which gives them common ground on which to relate to each other. Though their attraction is instant and their union passionate, it feels rooted despite their whirlwind of an affair.

One of the things I personally enjoyed the most about The Hellion’s Waltz is that it isn’t about the ton or the upper class of British society. Many Regency era romance novels are about the wealthy so it was really refreshing to read one about two working women. Waite writes with such rich and well researched details that it made the story really come alive. Though both characters are working women, they’re still from different classes. Waite brings in the smallest details to illustrate that. The fabrics they wear, the places they shop, such small things that give the reader so much information. You can tell she put in the time to find out about the trades they’re in and the world they would have lived in. I love a book that makes me learn something new when I least expect to and this one managed that multiple times.

Though The Hellion’s Waltz is the third book in the Feminine Pursuits series, it absolutely works as a stand alone. Each book in the series is only loosely tied into the others. Sometimes there are characters that appear in multiple books, but they are never central to stories outside their own. One of the leads in this series appeared briefly in the the previous book, The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows, but a reader won’t miss out on anything if they haven’t read it. If this is the first of the novels you do read and you enjoy it, I would definitely recommend you pick up the other two because you will love them as well. ( )