Review: Everything a Lady is Not

✨ First of all, a Thank you to Entangled Publishing for the gifted eARC of Everything a Lady is Not! Available now.✨

⚠️ Second of all, be warned, there are Spoilers Ahead! ⚠️

   Lucy Locket finds herself in quite a predicament. For the last eleven years, she has been the captive of an infamous criminal, and now suddenly finds herself at the mercy of lawman, Henry Beaumont, whom Lucy recognizes as a face from her past. Henry is seen as a disgrace to his family’s name. In hopes to restore his honor, he seeks to bring lawbreakers justice. Having discovered Lucy making off with stolen goods, he thought she’d be easy to take down and arrest...that is, until she proves to be his equal in swordplay! Henry soon realizes Lucy’s true identity, he swears instead to help bring her back into society, even if she argues with him every step of the way. 😂

   Let me start out by saying that this is in fact a very sweet story. I do love Enemies-to-Lovers, and I think that Lucy and Henry fit the criteria pretty well. The book is really a novella, being only a hundred and fifty pages or so and honestly I wish it had been longer. 

  While the concept of this story is great, it suffers from being condensed into such a short book. The pacing is also a bit confused in the sense that it's rushed in some places and dragged out in others. For example, Lucy and Henry remember each other very quickly in the beginning of the story. It also didn’t take long to bring Lucy back to her Duchess Grandmother. From there, it is quickly explained that Lucy needs to learn the social graces of a lady in order to get her inheritance. This was where the story decided to drag. It lingers so much on Lucy’s lessons and social faux pas, that there really wasn’t much time for anything else, including actual romantic development. This was actually a bit of a downer for me, because Lucy spent more time suffering from social humiliation than being able to enjoy her new life or find love.

  In a romance, I need more...well ROMANCE. Yes, it’s nice that it wasn’t “insta-love”. The development from enemies to friends was VERY good! But then, because the book ran out of time, the romance felt super rushed. If the book had been twice as long, I think it would have had a lot more balance. I felt there was so much build up with no pay off. 

   Oh, by the way, if you are looking for a “closed door’ romance...look no further. There is NO premarital (or postmarital) steam! This was a disappointment for me. You all KNOW that Ksquaredreads LOVES steamy romances! And there was so much potential for it here. There was a scene where Lucy explains that her introduction to dancing was from a gypsy woman, and she proceeds to demonstrate, making Henry nearly swoon. I would have LOVED to see Henry let loose and have Lucy go crazy on him with her dance moves! But, alas, there is none of that. But if you aren’t a fan of open door sex, this will be lovely for you! 

   In the end, I think Everything a Lady is Not, is a sweet and heartfelt story. I just don’t think it was long enough. Rags-to-riches and enemies-to-lovers is such a good combo and I think is worthy of a longer story.

4.5/⭐️ I would say this was a NEARLY four star read for me.

0/🔥 Zero in the steam department 🤷🏻‍♀️