ARC Review: Much Ado About Margaret by Madeleine Roux

Much Ado About Margaret

Author: Madeleine Roux
Publication: Dell (October 22, 2024)

Description: Madeleine Roux’s next season in Regency England follows a rebellious writer and the man who risks everything to publish her.

Margaret Arden yearns to live like the passionate and daring women in her novel. The idyllic life at Mosely Cottage with her two younger sisters and mother is fine, but Margaret wants more than the demure and dainty existence she’s known. After a particularly brutal rejection from an annoyingly attractive publisher, Margaret fears being forced into marriage to protect her family if their financial situation doesn’t improve—until her cousin’s glamorous wedding masquerade brings her onto a collision course with scandal, notoriety, and even love.

Captain Bridger Darrow is starting over after fighting for his country. Now home, he is struggling to save his family from destitution and succeed in a new venture of passion: book publishing. It’s all going rather poorly, until he stumbles upon loose pages of an astonishing novel while in attendance at his dearest friend’s wedding. Bridger knows he must publish it. But upon meeting the author, Bridger is stunned to discover that he—she—is a woman, and he has already told her off in grand fashion.

While Bridger is keen to gain her trust and rescind the initial rejection, Margaret can’t help but be skeptical of his intentions. Sparks fly between the two, just as the wedding of the season starts to descend into chaos when a masked dance leads to a case of mistaken identities.

My Thoughts: This was an entertaining historical romance. Margaret Arden dreams of becoming an author. Since her father's death, she has lived at Mosely Cottage with her mother and two younger sisters. They are living on her aunt's charity and the aunt wants Margaret to marry well to secure her family's future. 

Things go awry at her cousin Lane's wedding. She meets Bridger Darrow again which is distressing since he's the publisher who said very unkind things about her novel. And then her manuscript is blown out and open window and scattered over the grounds of the estate inaugurating a treasure hunt to find all the missing pages. Bridger finds a few of the pages and becomes intrigued by the story and determined to publish the work. 

This story has a little more depth than the usual Regency Romance. Bridger Darrow is a war veteran who still suffers from the horrors he witnessed. The wedding fireworks cause him to collapse to the ground. He also suffered from abuse at the hands of his father when he was a child and has an older brother who was also abused but turned to alcohol and bad behavior to overcome his childhood. 

Fans of Regency romances who might want some added depth will enjoy this story. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.