The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (2023) Alison Goodman (The Ill-Mannered Ladies)

Set in England in 1812

Content warnings: spousal abuse, homophobia, cancer, rape (off-page), child abuse & sexual assault (off-page), detailed description of medical procedure without anesthesia.

Gus and Julia, middle-aged twins who have never married, become involved in nefarious activities by accident, in seeking to help a friend who stood by them after their father’s ignoble death.

When we were children I had once cried because we were not identical. Our father had taken me aside and told me that he found such duplications unsettling and he was well satisfied with his two mismatched girls. He had been a good father and a better man. Yet in the eyes of society, his sordid death atop a rookery whore five years ago had become the sum of him.

This book sees the sisters involved in several mysteries: retrieving letters for a friend, helping an abused woman escape from her husband, helping girls escape from kidnapping and prostitution, and helping a woman escape from an asylum.

It was also true that after I learned about coverture from my reading, I became less and less inclined to hand over my half of our inherited fortune and all my legal and property rights—including the rights of my own body—to a husband. It would have to be a grand love, indeed, for me to willingly merge so completely with a man that I was all but legally obliterated. Most women did not have the choice to say no, but I did.

Additionally, Julia has what we would now name familial breast cancer, both are poorly treated by their brother (the head of their family), and Gus is struggling with a lack of faith.

What kind of god allowed such suffering—the untimely demise of a beloved betrothed and father and now a breast canker—to fall upon one of his most devoted worshippers? Certainly not one that I wished to exalt.

Despite those very heavy topics, it is not a depressing book, instead focusing on the positive things Gus does to help others, and her developing feelings for Lord Evan. I very much enjoyed the book and hope there will be another.

Characters: Augusta Colebrook, Julia Colebrook, Charlotte Lady Davenport, Caroline Thorne, Lord Evan Belford / Jonathan Hargate, Tully, William Weatherly, Duffy Lord Duffield, Sir Henry Woolcroft, Miss Harriet Woolcroft, Reginald Thorne, Bryden, Bertie Helden Lord Cholton, Mrs. Millicent Defray, Madame Frances d’Arblay / Fanny Burney, Miss Finchley, George Brummell, Mrs. Ellis-Brant, Mrs. Cullers, Miss Elizabeth Grant, Lady Hester Belford

Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime

Rating: 8/10

• Browse the archives:
  
• Curio » »
• « « Saint Peter’s Fair