He liked her, funny clothes and odd hair and the entire in-betweenness of her. She wasn’t an ordinary woman, but he wasn’t an ordinary man either. They fit together, and it felt right.

Look past the cover (I poked fun on my IG but - her hair and expression, his photoshopped shirt, his shoulder veins?) and this book is… amazing.

When I finish a book I just get a FEELING for what the star rating is. Generally, my ratings go like:
1 - disliked
2 - it was okay
3 - good not great
4 - great, could have loved it
5 - loved it, perfect book OR imperfect but love the way it made me feel

And to me, this book is a 5.

I picked up this book because I wanted to explore more books following the “girl in pants” trope. Charity has been living as Robert Selby for six years for a variety of reasons that are revealed slowly throughout the novel - but a main part of the ruse is because she wants to find an advantageous match for Louisa Selby.

Charity isn’t just dressing in “men’s clothes” to portray Robert - its become part of her identity and who she is.

Today was the first time she had dressed like this—she was going to stop thinking of these clothes as men’s clothes, because in fact they were hers—because she wanted to wear them, not as part of a necessary disguise.

I thought the way Cat Sebastian wrote this romance was so endearing and sweet. Something I liked was that Alistair doesn’t get panicked over his closeness or attraction to Robert (who he decides to call Robin). I’m new to the girl in pants trope/concept and listened to the ShelfLove podcast on it and they reviewed what happened in some old school romances with the trope - a reinforcement of gender stereotypes and/or gay panic when a man becomes attracted to a person presenting as a man.

I liked that Alistair seemed so aloof and cold to everyone, even his brother, and separated himself from his half-sisters… but Robin is the one to bring out the caring side of him and show him that it’s okay to love and reach out to others.

When Alistair finds out

Spoiler

that Robert is Charity… it’s sort of a cumulation of events. He finds out Robert lied to him about his father being Louisa’s godfather, and he is furious at being used. When Charity comes clean that she’s been lying - he isn’t disgusted. He’s stuck on the fact that she lied and used him for a favor, which we know is something he feels everyone wants from him. So I totally understood that.

I saw another reviewer say that some side characters (like Keating and Alistair’s half sister Amelia) were underutilized, which I agree with. But this didn’t detract from the book for me.

The same reviewer said that she wished Charity had more internal conflicts rather than everything being very situational… it could’ve explored more on her gender fluidity/identity. And I agree, but again - I don’t think this detracted from the story. I don’t know how much gender was being explored in the 1800s, but perhaps the concepts of gender fluidity/being non-binary was not something she would have realized was a possibility? I truly don’t know, I’m just speculating. And so to Charity, the best thing was a melding of what she knew and what she wanted - she wanted the freedom to live and dress how she wanted to, but she wanted to love Alistair openly, which meant she had to live as a woman. To me, this story was the best option for her. (And I’m using she/her pronouns as that’s what Cat Sebastian used in the book, as she said in her author’s note that’s more true to the time period - and will be familiar to readers.)