Undercover Maids
These ladies are not who they appear...
Pretty self-explanatory set of books this week, so if you have an extremely specific hankering, I got you covered! While I’m often frustrated by mistaken identity/Cyrano-style stories (though a roundup of those is coming eventually), hidden identity ones like these are right up my alley.
Never Trust a Pirate by Valerie Bowman. Danielle LaCrosse has just started a new gig as a maid in a viscount’s manor and is startled by a man who looks exactly like him but is acting more rakishly than she’d expect. That’s because he’s not the viscount- he’s his twin brother Cade Cavendish, assumed dead for many years but recently returned under mysterious circumstances. He’s a rumored pirate, she’s a former heiress that’s now orphaned and penniless, and both of them are lying about why they’re here in London.
Spycraft, hidden identity, mistaken identity, ass kicking, high seas adventure… this is one of my favorites of this 11 book series (it’s book 7, can be read solo but there’s a lot of extra context if you read in order) for a reason.
Rating: 4.5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
The Tattooed Duke by Maya Rodale. This time, our undercover maid isn’t a spy, but a journalist! The titular tattooed Duke of Wycliff, Sebastian, has just returned from his travels and is in need of a wife, because he may be titled, but he’s also broke. Complicating this wife hunt is a series of articles about him for The London Weekly that are eerily detailed. It’s almost like… no. It couldn’t be the saucy new maid, Eliza!
Or could it be? Eliza Fielding is The London Weekly’s investigative reporter, one of the four Writing Girls (who make up the female writing staff at the paper and feature as the four protagonists of this series, which we’ve seen once before), has been sent into the Duke’s household undercover to learn more about his mysterious travels and true nature. So it would definitely be complicated if she started to fall for him… especially since as far as he’s concerned she’s just one of his household employees.
Love a career-invested heroine bringing a powerful man to his knees, love a story about a journalist, love a Maya Rodale historical. You just can’t lose!
Rating: 4.5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
The Counterfeit Scoundrel by Lorraine Heath. Finally, instead of a journalist or a spy, we’ve got a detective, Marguerite "Daisy" Townsend, playing a new maid in the household of a powerful businessman known as Bishop. Daisy’s been hired to determine a wife’s suspected infidelity with Bishop, but it turns out that this allegedly scandalous rake is more than meets the eye, on purpose. As it turns out, Bishop has been faking affairs with women who want divorces, partially inspired by watching how his own mother suffered at the hands of his terrible father. Back in the day, women’s path to divorce was much harder than men’s (though both were more difficult) but if a man had proof of his wife’s infidelity that was that, which is the ruling (and ego wounding) that Bishop exploits.
Naturally, discovering this well-intentioned (if scandalous) side hustle throws a wrench in Daisy’s own career… and heart.
Lorraine Heath’s latest (and the start of a new series) is just as captivating as what came before. A queen, truly.
Rating: 4.5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Next week, I’ll be recommending books with historical activists/activism at the center! It’s been a real historical sweep recently, but the week after I got some extra spicy contemporary coming your way, so if historicals aren’t your bag, I gotcha ;)
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!