This story is told through limited omniscience (for example, one chapter focuses on Fletcher’s character while the next focuses on Elizabeth’s), as well as incorporating both Fletcher and Elizabeth’s penny dreadful stories they are writing (“The Vampire Tower” and “The Lady and The Highwayman”) into subsequent chapters. Using her profits to help educate young girls and protect them from the nefarious agendas of some unsavory characters on London streets, she comes into contact with Fletcher and together they realize that they can accomplish more good as a team than just through the motives of their secretive identities.
King’s true identity, a schoolteacher named Elizabeth Black, has an agenda of her own.
King’s popularity threatens to eclipse the novels of Fletcher Walker and his author comrades of the secret Dread Penny Society, a group of men who have sworn to use the profits made from their penny dreadful novels to eliminate the injustices forced upon the children of London slums. I look forward to reading those and see what other Victorian Romances she and other authors comes up with! Apparently, Eden has written another “Proper Romance Victorian” titled Ashes on the Moor and has another one coming out in November 2020 titled The Gentleman and the Thief. Eden has written over 50 proper romance novels and novellas and this story has inspired me to give other proper romances another chance. For example, instead of taking place in Regency times, it takes place in Victorian London and instead of containing a predictable romance plot, the love story comes second to a much larger-and frankly, more important-plot. For those of you, like me, who have trouble getting into these novels, The Lady and The Highwayman has a very different mood from other proper romance novels I have come across. These are elements where I think many books labelled “proper romances” fall a short, unfortunately. Don’t get me wrong, I would prefer to read/write a clean romance instead of a dirty one, especially in my favorite genre of historical fiction, but (like any book) it usually takes a very well-written clean romance with likable main characters and an engaging plot to get me hooked.
Personally, I’m usually not a fan of the cliches contained in today’s Jane Austenian takes on “proper romance” historical novels.
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