Ladies in Hating
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4.1 • 8 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A pair of Gothic novelists trade rivalry for love in this swoony, steamy, sapphic Regency by USA Today bestselling author Alexandra Vasti.
Celebrated authoress Lady Georgiana Cleeve has achieved fame and fortune. Unfortunately, she’s also acquired an enemy: the enigmatic Lady Darling, whose spine-tingling plots appear to be pulled straight from Georgiana’s own manuscripts. What’s a stubborn, steely writer to do? Unmask her rival, of course.
But unmasking doesn’t go according to plan—because Lady Darling is actually Cat Lacey, the butler’s daughter and object of Georgiana’s very secret, very embarrassing teenage infatuation.
Cat Lacey has spent a decade clawing her family out of poverty. The last thing she needs is to be distracted by the stunning(ly pretentious) Lady Georgiana Cleeve. But Cat can’t seem to escape her infuriatingly beautiful rival—including at the eerie manor where they both plan to set their next books. The plot unexpectedly thickens, however, when the novelists find themselves trapped in the manor together. In between ghostly moans and spectral staff, Cat and Georgiana come face-to-face with real danger: the scorching passion that’s been haunting their rivalry all along.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vasti concludes her Belvoir's Library trilogy (after Earl Crush) with this clever Regency. Lady Georgiana Cleeve was disowned by her late father when she outed herself as the scandalous gothic romance author Geneva Desrosiers six years before the start of the book. Now she suspects fellow author Lady Darling of plagiarism and sets out to confront her—only to discover that Lady Darling is the pseudonym of Cat Lacy, her father's butler's daughter and Georgiana's teenage crush. Their overlapping history explains the similarities in their work, but the women's hostile encounter only fans the flames of their rivalry. Neither is pleased to bump into the other again at Renwick House, a purportedly haunted Gothic mansion that both are researching as a setting for forthcoming novels. Their animosity quickly fades, however, in the face of the manor's spookiness and their intensifying mutual attraction. When an assailant traps them inside the building only to be killed by the house's crumbling infrastructure, the women work together to escape—and to figure out who's coming after them and why. Though this mystery meanders a bit, the plot engages deeply with gothic literary tradition while retaining a fun, frothy tone. Vasti also showcases her knack for sweeping love declarations and steamy sex scenes that feel firmly grounded in character. This sends the series out on a high note.
