Crinolines for the cause

Crinolines, at first glance, are towards the more ridiculous end of fashion inflicted on ladies of the mid-Victorian period. But for the ladies of Miss Corvus’s Benevolent Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies—aka The Crinoline Academy—the wired hoops give the wearer presence and size, a buffer in a world that so often wants to diminish women. They’re also a handy spot to squirrel away housebreaking tools, just as hairpins make for handy pick-locks and widows weeds practical camouflage whilst spying on the opposition.  For the girls of Miss Corvus’s schools are not ordinary orphans. Trained over years to be independent, resourceful and quick-witted, Miss Corvus’s girls have one mission: to disrupt the patriarchy. And no one does it better than Euphemia Flite, the brightest student Miss Corvus has ever produced, and the one that the mysterious old lady has tapped for her most vital mission. But Effie doesn’t relish her role as avenger; in fact, she wants nothing more than to complete the job, get the funds that Miss Corvus had promised her and set up her own independent home with her pet poodle Franc. She just needs to pretend to be a society deb long enough to get some career-ruining evidence on powerful politician Lord Compton, deliver it to Miss Corvus, and she’ll be free of the Crinoline Academy forever.

Gabriel Royce hasn’t spent years building his St. Giles gambling empire and cultivating the powerful Compton’s influence to let some slip of a woman overturn all his hard work. Compton keeps the police from his door and introduces him to the men that could help make St. Giles into a better place—but still under his sway. If the viscount is Parliament’s biggest opponent to women’s rights, it hardly matters to Gabriel. A few encounters with the mysterious Miss Flite proves that she is no ordinary miss however, and after being thrust together in a few sticky situations, Gabriel finds he’s starting to care about Miss Flite a bit too much. Is a chance at love worth giving up everything they’ve fought for and the futures they envisioned?

Rules for Ruin launches Mimi Matthews’ newest series The Crinoline Academy. As readers have come to expect from Matthews, it features independent, complex women intent on bettering their lives, while staying accurate to the historical reality. Effie and Gabriel generate plenty of chemistry between them, but the romance between them really rests on both coming into their own identities--Gabriel as something other than the St Giles tough and Effie as an independent woman who can rise above her origins—that neither would have been able to do without the other’s help. But my favorite element of Rules for Ruin lies in Matthews’ depiction of the women working to make a better life for other women. Great Britain in the 1860s regarded women as practically invisible or helpless, so it’s satisfying to see how Miss Corvus and her charges twist those crippling attitudes into the very weapons to win rights—and still find romantic happiness. More titles are coming from The Crinoline Academy, so readers who enjoy historically accurate fiction, closed-door romances with satisfying heat, or character-driven historical fiction might wish to pick up this, or some of Matthews’ previous series.