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There’s a captivating sense of gothic tension filling Finding Lady Enderly, a romance that mixes suspense, a rags-to-riches Cinderella story, elements of faith and class division all in one fascinating wrapper.
Raina Bretton is miserably poor working as a rag picker in London’s East End. She’s on her nightly rounds when a man approaches her with a fancy dress and jeweled shoes and offers her a respectable position at a high class household called Rothburne Abbey, a former monastery that’s the current home of Lyn, the Countess of Enderly. The post will pay her the princely sum of a hundred pounds a year – unthinkable to an orphan who has lived all her life in poverty. The man says he sees beauty, spirit, poise and dignity in her that could be cultivated into something more – something hard for the girl cruelly called ‘Ragna’ by her neighbors – to believe. Raina is tempted enough by the promise of warmth and safety to go to the Abbey, allowing the solicitor to usher her onto the train when she changes her mind at the last minute.
At the tumbled down Rothburne Abbey, poppies bloom in the autumn and an entire garden hides between floors. Raina soon learns there’s a reason why she’s been selected to lounge in the lap of luxury – her benefactor is Victor Prenderghast, the Countess’ solicitor, and he has plucked her from poverty because she’s a dead ringer for the real countess who wishes to rest in seclusion after a voyage to India while Raina doubles for her until she’s recovered enough to rejoin society. With Victor whispering in her ear that she could have the world on a platter – and manipulating her using the Biblical story of Esther as a model – Raina soon finds herself enmeshed in the high class mystery of Lady Enderly’s world.
And then she meets the house’s new stablemaster and her heart stops. For he is the long-lost sweetheart she was told had died at sea. Sullivan “Sully” McKenna has come to Rothburne Abbey to hide from court marshaling after rallying his fellow sailors in a mutiny against the aggressions of a cruel captain. Victor chooses to hold this over Raina’s head – continue her masquerade and he will get Sully legal counsel and won’t tell anyone about her culpability in his plot, but if she refuses, she’ll be thrown in prison along with her beloved. So, against her better judgment and moral compass, she becomes Lady Enderly, fighting Phillip’s management of her tenants, warding off the strangely withdrawn Earl of Enderly, forming relationships with the countess’ friends and moving in her circles – and all the while Sully worries that Raina is in danger. What happened to the countess – and why would Victor do anything to keep the secret of her hiatus under wraps?
Finding Lady Enderly is a solid gothic mystery that has a surprising denouement and a lot of complicated monsters lurking between its pages. None of its characters are paragons of perfection, which makes watching Raina’s roam through the upper class’ environs a fascinating process to watch. The major demon she must tackle is self-image and vanity; only when she can put others above herself, will her mission be fully completed.
The supporting characters all draw the eye and the imagination, from the horribleness of Victor to the fascinating humanity of the Earl of Enderly. They provide pieces to a puzzle that’s well-secluded and whose conclusion is truly shocking.
Religion is handled fairly well within the story’s confines. Sully is a Vicar’s son, and Raina yearns to know God as he does – and through the inspiration of Esther and the world in which she has been plunged, Raina comes through her trial by fire and realizes that God works through others in mysterious ways. Her romance with Sully is desperately conducted through notes and snatches of song as they try to hide the true nature of their union – it’s fraught and dramatic and interesting.
I have one minor quibble with the book; the dialogue sometimes feels pretty stiff and stagey. It’s is a minor problem, truly, but sometimes it really is distracting. Overall though, Finding Lady Enderly is a twisty, surprising little delight of a mystery.
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Grade: A-
Book Type: Inspirational Romance
Sensuality: Kisses
Review Date: 21/08/19
Publication Date: 08/2019
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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ETA: if anyone wants me to explain the whole technical reason behind how Raina manages to pass off as minor nobility without causing too much of a social stir, I can explain, tho it’ll involve spoiling the book!
Accents, vocabulary, modes of address, who speaks first, deportment, acceptable physical movements (eg who you give your hand to and how warmly), table manners, tea manners, how to ride, the embroidery/painting/music skill set. It is notable that the entire point of Shaw’s Pygmalion is that Higgins is torturing Eliza, it’s horrible hard work. Judith Ivory’s The Proposition gamely attempts to tackle this by having the heroine be a philologist hired to teach the hero to talk proper, but rather falls down with the absolutely catastrophic ‘phonetic’ accent rendition (and horrible 90s ‘you want it really’ sexual attitudes, ugh).
Not to mention what a rag-picker’s hands would look like and how long it would take you to make them look like a lady’s. It very much depends if she’s got to pass herself off in polite society or simply be seen from a distance, of course. I absolutely love the Brat Farrar/Masqueraders trope, but I think it’s easier to skate over the creditibility gap when it isn’t full-scale gutter-to-castle.
That reminds me of the scene in Gone With the Wind where Rhett sees Scarlett’s roughened, blistered hands and realizes she’s been doing hard work recently.
Now I really want to read the Ivory book.
The book’s got a Secret Justification for all of this but I can’t reveal that plot point ’cause it’s a mid-book spoiler!
The Ivory book is worth a read. Some hold it up as one of her sweetest and those people do gloss over the remaking of the hero in favor of the romance. However, what is notable is that he retains a fair bit of his origins, but again, you have to believe that it doesn’t do him as much of a disservice.
I’ll see if my library has it!
The above is a very good point. I am also wondering about deportment and conversation lessons, basically, a finishing school’s worth of lessons. All of these are not just about this particular book. Rags to riches stories are very popular in historical romance but they never quite show how the transformation happens. Unless this particular book is different?
There’s a Secret Plot Point that explains what’s happening, but yep, There’s a heavy dose of Magical Realism going on where she can wash up and comb out her hair and pass for minor nobility physically but there are diction/comportment/etc lessons delivered.
A question: how does a rag picker from London’s East End come to sound like a countess? Accent and vocabulary are so important in determining class and origin in England (and elsewhere), was there a bit of “My Fair Lady” and its elocution lessons in the book?
There is indeed lessons in poise/diction for her buried in the book, though they’re mainly glossed over in favor of the mystery elements/Cinderella/My Fair Lady parallels. I didn’t mind this glossing over of reality for , since the book leans heavily on the mystery/Cinderella/spiritual elements, but YMMV.
* for fantasy and morality lessons