Review: The Spinster Strikes Back (Ladies' Revenge Club #1) by Ava Devlin

                                                                   

Print Length: 249 pages

Publisher: Ava Devlin (May 29, 2023)

From Goodreads.com:  Dot Fletcher’s happiness turned to horror when she was abandoned at the altar, humiliated in front of the cream of London Society. One year later, when the woman she was scorned for shows up at her front door, heavily pregnant and just as scorned, the two join forces to destroy the man who betrayed them both. They’ll have to go up against the most formidable barrister in London to do it.

Silas Cain, the secret bastard brother of the rakish Earl of Bentley, will protect his badly behaved little brother at all costs, no matter how drawn he is to the fiery and determined Miss Fletcher.

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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

While I have absolutely nothing against a slow-burn romance, in fact, I usually prefer them to stories where the characters fall hopelessly in love within five minutes; this one leaned a little too heavily into the slow burn for my tastes.

To be clear, I genuinely enjoyed the early dynamic between Silas and Dot. Watching them clash was easily the highlight of the book for me. Dot’s refusal to back down from him, especially when she believed she was standing on moral ground, made her admirable and easy to root for. It was equally easy to understand why Silas found himself both bemused and charmed by her, particularly since she appeared to be the only person willing to stand up to him without hesitation.

The problem, however, is that their relationship seemed to skip an essential step. They moved convincingly from adversaries to friends, and then simply stopped there. I never fully bought into the romantic transition. Instead, it felt less like two people falling in love and more like Dot deciding she wanted marriage and concluding that Silas would do nicely, while Silas, who clearly admired her and enjoyed sharing her company (and her bed), simply didn’t object when she proposed the idea. The emotional development needed to sell their romance just wasn’t quite on the page for me.

One of my bigger struggles with the story, surprisingly, was Dot herself; specifically how relentlessly kind she was. Now, before that sounds overly harsh, let me explain. We are repeatedly told that her father is wheelchair-bound and that, despite her efforts to continue his legal work, they are nearly destitute. Their home is falling into disrepair (and the downstairs almost entirely devoid of furnishings), and at one point the cook admits there isn’t even enough food prepared to feed an unexpected guest. And yet Dot somehow takes not one, but two additional people into her household? Yes, Claire arrives with money, but sheltering her still carries enormous social risk, not only to Dot’s own reputation but to her father’s as well. Given the precariousness of their situation, this level of generosity felt less admirable and more implausible.

The ending also left me feeling oddly underwhelmed. After all the buildup surrounding Freddy’s character and reputation, I expected at least some dramatic confrontation or resistance. Instead, he proved as docile as a kitten, calmly reflecting on how he hoped someday to earn Claire’s forgiveness and be allowed to see his son. Beyond feeling anticlimactic, this resolution raised practical questions. Given the legal realities of the time period, where wives were effectively considered their husbands’ property, it strained credibility that Claire could control Freddy’s estate, keep him on an allowance, remove him from his ancestral home, and restrict access to his child, regardless of whatever contracts were supposedly drawn up.

There were also several continuity issues that pulled me out of the story. At one point, Silas speculates that his brother may have learned about the dissolution of Dot’s father’s law firm before jilting her, except the firm’s collapse happened because of that jilting, not before it. In another scene, Silas leaves Dot at the courthouse while she waits for a clerk, only to later encounter her at the market where she accuses him of following her,  despite there being no logical way for her to have arrived ahead of him. Similarly puzzling was a gathering at the vicar’s home where a sudden storm forces guests to stay overnight, yet rooms and sleepwear somehow appear to have already been fully prepared for everyone.

On a smaller scale, there were also moments where incorrect word choices disrupted the flow. Phrases like “she stepped to her side,” or “from without, the sound of a bell,” read awkwardly, and one particularly amusing moment described Dot standing on her toes “to plan a kiss on the tip of her nose” rather than Silas’s — an image that was certainly memorable, just not for the intended reasons.

All things considered, this was an enjoyable read in parts, particularly when the characters were sparring and the tension between them felt alive. Unfortunately, the romance itself never quite reached the emotional depth I was hoping for, and a combination of pacing issues, historical inconsistencies, and continuity errors kept it from fully working for me.