Infamous by Lex Croucher was a sweet slow-burn romance. If you're interested in Regency Era romances or in women writing in historical fiction, I think this could be a good fit book for you. It at times made me think of the Emily and Sue plotlines in 'Dickinson', and the focus on the main characters writing also made me think of Zelda Fitzgerald and all the other writers who were thought to be published under someone else's name. But, while the cover advertises this book as Booksmart meets Bridgerton, I didn't totally feel either the laugh-out-loud humor of Booksmart or the sexy tones of Bridgerton through the majority of the book.

At times I questioned how old the characters were. While I was glad the author aged the characters up more than the typical regency-era romance characters may be, they sometimes came across as sort of immature. I think my favorite part of the book was the plotline surrounding the main character's book and writing aspirations and I would have loved to hear more about this story expanded. However this understandably wasn't the main focus of this romance novel, but I didn't quite feel the tension between the two women serving as the romantic leads in the novel.

**Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Goodreads for this ARC in exchange for an honest review**

Thank you to the publisher for this ALC. Lex Croucher doesn't miss and her audiobooks are truly just the best time.

These books are honestly so much fun and I devoured this one on audio! Absolutely loved and enjoyed it so much. Just a fun time.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* This was a really great book!! i love historical fiction so i knew i would likely enjoy reading this book but it being a romance i was a bit worried, it was super cute though! would recommend!

OH MY. I really just heavily disliked this book. I took a couple days to been review because i wanted to digest and decide how i truly felt but i just did not enjoy this at all.

I felt that our MC was excruciating frustrating and just continued to make dumb decisions. I couldn’t connect and due to that it was painfully difficult to get through this.

I hated the end of the book, and just wouldn’t recommend this to anyone.

LGBTQIA+ Pride Month #1 ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

rep: bi, lesbian

I was promised a queer best friend romance. Instead, Eddie ("short" for Edith) spends more than half the book mooning over the poet Nash Nicholson. If he were alive today, or I suppose alive at all, he would 100% be a fuckboi screenwriter living in Silver Lake. And that's one of my red flags. An extra star for Rose, the only levelheaded character in this story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.

What a cute story! I’m pretty much obsessed with anything that remotely feels like Bridgerton, so INFAMOUS gave me all of those vibes and more.

The audiobook narration was fun, and I highly recommend this addition to the story of friendship, and queer romance.

*many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the gifted audiobook.

This is a "me" thing, but I don't think this author is for me. I know a book is a DNF for me when I stop picking it up and/or start skimming.

Book Review 3.0🌟I received this book as a digital ARC and an audiobook ARC from @netgalley This is second book within the same Regency era as the other Lex Croucher (@lexcanroar) book that I had read called “Reputation”. I liked the relationship between the two main women. The climax at the end left something to be desired. I wanted the main character to get a little bit more “visceral” revenge on him for the terrible things that he had done. As usual, if you are looking for a light-hearted, Regency-era romance with an LGBTQ+ twist, I recommend this book. Link to purchase: https://amzn.to/3OyPFuY #bookreview #bookstagram #arc #netgally #infamous #ilovereading

A forbidden queer historical regency romance! This was so fun on audio! This was such a swoony book and fans of Bridgerton will love!

(⅖)

Rep: Bi mc, Chinese lesbian love interest, queer side characters, black side characters, etc

This book was described to me as Jane Austen meets the tv show, Dickison. As someone who loves both, I had to read this book and I do agree on this description.

Eddie is an inspiring writer and is best friends with Rose. They are the best of friends, having grown up with each other. However, a rift is made between them when Rose has taken an interest in marriage and is courting someone, making Eddie horrified. At an event, Eddie meets Nash, her favourite poet, and he offers to help Eddie with her writing.

I feel indifferent with this book. I think my main concern with this book is how slow the plot is. I did struggle getting through it and found that I couldn’t connect with most of the characters. For a romance book, I think it really lacked romance between the two love interests. I lost interest in this book because of these reasons.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC for an honest review.

I tried to get into this but it’s just not for me. I didn’t feel any connect between the MCs and their behavior was very adolescent for their age. I thought perhaps I should read the first book but that didn’t work out either so I’m calling it a day. I’m disappointed as I was really excited for a queer historical romance but I’ll have to find it elsewhere.

Thank you for the advance audiobook copy via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

✨ Review ✨ Infamous by Lex Croucher; Narrated by Ellie Kendrick

Important note: You don't need to remember ANYTHiNG from Reputation, the previous book in the series, before reading this one. New characters and events all around! (I needlessly hustled around trying to remember the plot of the last one lol)

Eddie (Edith) and Rose have been best friends since they were kids -- and the book starts with them in their tree house. But now Rose is engaged and Eddie has met famous author Nash Nicholson, and they must grapple with their changing lives -- can they stay best friends after Rose marries? After meeting Nash, Eddie, and Rose by association, fall in with a wild literary crowd that doesn't live by regency societal norms and proprieties.

Nash, fascinated by Eddie, encourages her writing, and sets up a long stay at his remote lake house that included him and his wife (sometimes estranged?), Eddie, Rose and her fiancee, and a few other artsy characters. Constant shenanigans ensue as this raucous bunch takes the literally crumbling lake house by storm.

This book was SO MUCH fun. I loved Eddie's wild family, filled with silly kids full of personality (I was almost sad when we left them behind early in the book). I really enjoyed the more relaxed setting of the gatherings Nash hosted and the way they broke with societal norms, in the pursuit of fun, drama, and art. The book lagged for me a bit in the middle where it just felt like it was dragging without a lot of development, but otherwise this was such a fun ride!

Like the first, you have to be willing to sacrifice some historical accuracy perhaps for a fun adventure, but I was totally here for this.The audio was enjoyable; occasionally I felt confused about who was actually talking in the story, but this is a minor complaint.

Best of all, this reads almost like really well written Anne and Diana fan fic! This maps onto their personalities so well, and I loved it for this (even if not intended), I shall now always imagine this for them 😂

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: historic f/f romance, friends-to-lovers
Setting: regency era London and middle of nowhere lake house
Reminds me of: Anne and Diana fan fic! :D; Reputation
Pub Date: out now!

Read this if you like:
⭕️ drunken regency lakehouse romps
⭕️ f/f friends-to-lovers stories
⭕️ writers & artists

Thanks to St. Martin's Press, Macmillan Audio, and #netgalley for advanced copies of this book!

I had read the book of this initially and was so eager to see how it was delivered in the audiobook. Croucher's work is nothing short of a delight and I adored the narrator - she made the story feel new again and reframed the narrative to be thrilling and aweinspiring. I listened through twice and adored.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this audiobook. Infamous was a slow start for me. It took me a while to get into the characters, and the story really didn’t pick up until the latter half of the book. All that to say, I did really end up enjoying this. Eddie wasn’t a perfect character by any means, but I enjoyed her quirks and flaws. I enjoyed watching her relationship with Rose grow, and I very much liked the twist that happened in her conflict with Nash. I wish the end weren't so rushed because that's where more of the exciting parts of the story were.

I liked the narrator. She did a good job and made an effort to make each character unique.

As for the story, I ger what Lex Croucher is trying to do by making her main characters unlikable but it still bugs me. Don't want a perfect character for a high society period romance? Sure. But Eddie was so rude and idiotic that I can't believe anyone would want to be her friend.

Rose and Adam (Or whatever his name is) saved the book.

While I did like this more than reputation, I think this is my last Lex Croucher book. She's talented but I'm just not the right audience for her work.

This was a good story that kept me guessing for a long time. I really enjoyed the noodle isolated island manner. I think it reflected how the main character felt: isolated, falling apart, unsafe.

I love Lex Croucher’s take on the regency era. This book gave me everything I had hoped for considering how much I loved Reputation!

I loved Eddie and Rose so much and ahhh they were so cute! I want so much more from them!

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this audio book.

This felt a little too slow paced for me to really enjoy it. The characters were decent and I liked the overall premise but it didn't draw me in as much as I thought it would. The narrator was good though.

The Great

Eddie and Rose’s relationship. Friends to lovers, slowly building. Rose Lee is in love with Edith “Eddie” Miller, obvious to just about everyone except Eddie. That’s something so very sapphic to me, being the last one to know what everyone else has already figured out. They “practice” how to kiss with each other and when Rose is trying to kiss Eddie for real, she thinks it’s just more platonic practicing. Eddie holds fast to a childhood promise that neither of them would marry, and for a long time can’t figure out why it’s so important to her, why she feels she is losing Rose.

Eddie’s family. Big and bustling, distinct characters, informal atmosphere. Eddie has four siblings and two parents, who all encourage her education and her writing.

Casual diversity. The real world regency era in England would not have been as square and homogenous as most movies make it out to be. There are gay, lesbian, and bi characters here, but of course they are not “out.” There still would have been private pockets of society for the alphabet mafia, especially with the literary or artistic crowd. One set of Rose’s grandparents are from China. We normally don’t see Asian or biracial with one of the races being Asian in historical fiction. But they definitely existed. One character from the literary scene is Black and an abolitionist. Sadly we don’t really see the rest of the crew actively engage in abolition, more of just general, bland encouragement for his writing.

Rose Lee. Rose knows exactly who she is and firmly sticks by what she wants out of life. She doesn’t hide her Asian heritage. She picks a marriage to a man that she thinks would give her the best life, under the circumstances. She knows she is only romantically interested in women and has chosen her homosexual soon-to-be husband so that they can make their home a haven to what would be termed today as LGBT+ people. She is far quicker to understand people’s character and predatory notions than Eddie. She lets Eddie know what she thinks of her decisions, she doesn’t tend to let things fester inside. It’s easy for the reader to fall in love with this character.

The Questionable

Eddie Miller. Most reviewers seem to hate how oblivious Eddie is about Rose, about Nash, about life in general. I think it’s realistic for Eddie to not realize she has feelings for women, Rose in particular. Especially with biphobia and bi-erasure. It took me until about her age to realize that I kept assuming I would have sexual attraction to a guy in real life because I had for fictional men. Yet I assumed I can’t be attracted at all to women because I hadn’t felt real-world attraction like I had felt for fictional women. Had to battle my own bi-erasure. So putting Eddie about 200 years back into regency England, it makes sense why she wouldn’t realize her feelings.

Eddie cont’d. I think Eddie not realizing how vile Nash is has more to do with her own ideals rather than examining the reality of the situation. She wants to be acknowledged by a literary idol, be taken into the London literary scene, and be deemed fit to be among them. She wants to be constructively critiqued then published then adored. It’s not uncommon for people to dismiss the idea that someone they deem a hero from an institution they love is capable of villainy, of moral and legal crimes. We see that with football stars, with politicians, with musicians. People do not want to believe that they could be duped or that their institutions need questioning. They sometimes mentally equate accusing a hero of theirs with accusing themselves and cling more as the logic against their devotion piles up. Eddie experiences a small version of that with Nash. At least that’s how I see it.

Also Rose literally has a maid named Jemima. My first thought was: how did that make it through? I’ll assume that there isn’t the same connotations in Britain.

The Bad

The crumbling waterlogged mansion scenes. Looking back, we definitely spend too much time here, making Nash too much the focus of the book. Especially since so many things get unresolved from this portion of the book. Did Nash kill that guy? That didn’t seem like it would be solely from Eddie’s delirious mushroom episode. Did Nash assault that servant; is that guy okay? It was never talked about again.

Also I could have used a romantic scene with Rose and Eddie once they had returned to their normal lives or years into the future. It does make sense how the use of documents was employed to show a realistic way their relationship would have gone on. But that’s a really subjective critique.

Also I personally would have liked more time with the recourse of the stolen manuscript, with Eddie exhausting her avenues of getting the truth out there before a big internal moment of despair, then getting back up to write another novel. This happens quickly at the end, and it doesn’t seem like she actually tried to get the truth out there. Again, a really subjective critique.

Overall

I enjoyed reading most of this book, and really enjoyed each of the characters. I think others’ enjoyment of this work will depend upon if they absolutely despise the main character being the last to figure out things or if they can allow some leeway for the main character to make these mistakes. Also depends on if they like the first person POV, romances with a small bit of spice, and historical fiction.

I’m giving it a 7/10 mostly worth the read. Recommending for others involved many asterisks.

A great audiobook narrator really helped this one.