Devil in Spring

Practically perfect! I might go back and make this 5 stars later! I confess that part of the appeal is that this novel included the reappearance of one of my favorite couples from Kleypas' Wallflowers series, plus a cameo from one other character. There's also more of "lady doctor" Garrett Gibson, plenty of back-and-forth between the main couple about the legal erasure of women's personhood in marriage at the time, and a heroine with an "impulse control problem" such that she's the person the plot climax centers around. There's also a bit on Irish separatism here, though, that I think Kleypas has more sensitively handled in other novels (like even the previous novel in this series): here it's treated more as a vehicle for some plot drama and there's a missed opportunity to reexamine colonialism. Part of why I like Kleypas, however, is that's a remarkable thing to be saying about the plot of a romance novel!