The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes: A Novel

"Technically this one is Georgian—an earlier period that ran from 1714 to 1837—but for all intents and purposes it falls under Regency in the marketing aspect. Cat Sebastian’s books are constantly reaching out of the usual boxes of historical romances. They’re doing something new, they’re doing something edgy. The subtitle of this one is basically: ‘Be gay, do crimes.’ It’s about a duchess named Marian Hayes, who may or may not have murdered her husband; she’s not entirely sure. She ends up going on a road trip to go into hiding while she waits for all of this mess to blow over, and she goes with the man who has been blackmailing her. They’re both bisexual, and it’s one of those great queer M/F romances that I love so much. It’s about the takedown of the aristocracy as two people try to find a life outside of the past that has held them back. They’re very grumpy and the banter is exquisite. It’s a little murdery and it’s just so much fun. If you’ve ever had fun getting angry about something, then this book is like that, because when you’re finally no longer mad, you feel even better. Marian and her blackmailer pretend to be married while they’re hiding and staying at this tiny inn, and of course there’s only one bed. They don’t really like each other entirely yet but they do find each other attractive. It’s a wonderful bit of chaos. I will say that you might want to read the first book in the series before this one, which is called The Queer Principles of Kitt Webb , but I do think that these books stand well enough on their own. Cat’s currently also writing some romances that will take place in the 1950s, both in the US and in the UK. I’m loving them so I’m hoping that we open the genre up more geographically and time period-wise because there’s so much fun stuff that you could put in a historical romance."