BOMBSHELL is the glittering opener for the new Hell’s Belles series by Sarah Maclean. This is a Victorian historical romance inspired by a real life girl gang in late 1800s England. Y’all, I am here for this girl gang! A group of women have banded together to help downtrodden and abused women. They provide all kinds of support including financial support or letter of reference for new jobs. But they also work to exposed or banish the evil men who prey upon wives, sisters, and employees. So satisfying! There’s a duchess who is the mastermind, a shy genius of explosives, a spy, and Sesily. Lady Sesily is also known throughout London as Sexily. She uses her bawdy reputation and feminine wiles to entrap men and lure them into situations where the Belles can mete out justice. Someone I follow referred to her as the face man, and I love this description.
Long term fans of Maclean will find plenty of familiar characters here, but the book easily stands on its own. The best things about this book are the female friendships and feminism. When our hero, Caleb, tries to protect Sesily during a bar fight, she tells him,
“Men are ridiculous.”
“For wanting to keep you safe?”
“For believing you aren’t the thing from which we are most in danger.” She spread her arms wide. “Look around you.”
The most satisfying part of the romance is when Caleb comes to acknowledge Sesily’s agency. Her right to choose, and her right to act against injustice. A man’s recognition of the correctness of feminism is something I think I love even harder in romance because it’s so hard to achieve in real life, sadly. So this book is empowering and cathartic.
Sesily and Caleb have been pining for each other for two years. Caleb has stayed away from Sesily for what I thought would be the usual contrived heroic nonsense, but Caleb does actually have pretty valid reason to stay away in an attempt to keep Sesily safe. Sesily, of course, declares that she will keep herself safe, and make Caleb safe too. You go, girl! These two have some powerful chemistry, and their inexorable growing closeness is steamy.
Caleb is back from America for a christening, and soon Lady Sesily and Caleb are entangled in several overlapping tumultuous plots. There is plenty of action, both the romantic kind and also the girl gang kind (YES!) that keep the story merrily humming along. Maclean brings us an intrepid and beautifully competent heroine who saves others, herself, and her man. BOMBSHELL wraps romance, intrigue, and feminism into a highly appealing dish that I gobbled up.
New York Times bestselling author Sarah MacLean returns with a blazingly sexy, unapologetically feminist new series, Hell’s Belles, beginning with a bold, bombshell of a heroine, able to dispose of a scoundrel—or seduce one—in a single night.
After years of living as London’s brightest scandal, Lady Sesily Talbot has embraced the reputation and the freedom that comes with the title. No one looks twice when she lures a gentleman into the dark gardens beyond a Mayfair ballroom…and no one realizes those trysts are not what they seem.
No one, that is, but Caleb Calhoun, who has spent years trying not to notice his best friend’s beautiful, brash, brilliant sister. If you ask him, he’s been a saint about it, considering the way she looks at him…and the way she talks to him…and the way she’d felt in his arms during their one ill-advised kiss.
Except someone has to keep Sesily from tumbling into trouble during her dangerous late-night escapades, and maybe close proximity is exactly what Caleb needs to get this infuriating, outrageous woman out of his system. But now Caleb is the one in trouble, because he’s fast realizing that Sesily isn’t for forgetting…she’s forever. And forever isn’t something he can risk.
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