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After a quick detour to start the Romancing Summer Challenge, we are back to Book 7 of Elizabeth Hoyt's Maiden Lane series, Darling Beast. This book starts the next little chunk of books in the series which I'll call the Harte's Folley chunk. After meeting Apollo in the previous book, I was super excited to see him heal from his injuries and find his own HEA. Update: I have applied this book to the Romancing Summer Challenge for the backlist prompt.
Lily, our heroine, is the premiere actress of the time and highly regarded. She's been mentioned in previous books by her stage name of Robin Goodfellow. It's also been pointed out that she does "breeches" roles, which a lot of the ladies love. We come to find out that Apollo is friends and business partners with Asa Makepeace and all his capital (that he invested before put in bedlam) was put towards Harte's Folley. However, it was burned down in the previous book. He is hiding out and redoing the landscaping and gardens. He's actually been trained in it before his grandfather got wind and forced him to stop since he's heir to the earldom. Asa had made a deal with Lily to be exclusive to his theatre, but since it's burned down she has no income. In exchange he allows her, her son Indio and her friend (she's more like godmother/caretaker/lady's maid) to stay in one of the theatre rooms that wasn't completely destroyed. One day Indio mentions the monster in the garden and they come to find out that it's really Apollo and since he's been gardening in the mud and ash, he's very dirty.
I really enjoyed their love story and liked how everything was laid out. Why this is 4-stars and not 5 is that I wanted more of a connection between them before he regained his voice. It was very sweet the moment he first talks, screaming Indio's name in terror as a tree is falling towards him. I just wish that the connection between them was a little bit stronger before not only he regains his voice, but he goes about hunting the actually murderer that set Apollo up. There's twists in the plot that Lily ends up at the same house party and they finally get intimate, but I was missing the other types of intimacy. It just felt a lot more rushed than previous books and more insta-love. I did love Apollo and Indio's relationship and how he just followed him around everywhere and just watched him work from the bushes.
The plot around the murders of Apollo's "friends" was kind of obvious to me. It didn't pull too much from the romance since it was also directly associated with Apollo, but as I think this maybe it did since I felt the romance was rushed. It didn't seem like it was obviously taking away from the story. I also am intrigued by the Duke of Montgomery and am interested to see how he plays into everything. I feel like the overall plot keeps evolving, which I really like. I feel like if we were still dealing with the gin stills and Ghost of St. Giles directly I would've started to get a little bored. It helps that she is doing major plots in three book chunks.
I am super excited to continue my binge and can't wait for the next book. I've been waiting for Phoebe's book since we met her in book 2, and I am so excited for the romance between her and Captain Trevillion. I'm really enjoying the series so far and can't wait to see what happens next!
Have you read Darling Beast?
Bookishly Yours,
Stasi🍎
STATISTICS: Darling Beast, Elizabeth Hoyt, 4-stars, 1 day, eBook, 321 pages, published in 2014
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