To Marry and to Meddle (Regency Vows #3) by Martha Waters

Though the love interest of this book is a theater owner, this book lacked drama.

Thank you to @atriabooks and @this_is_edelweiss for the ARC of this third in the series, which is out April 5, 2022.

I have to admit, as a person who works in the theater industry, I was both excited and worried to pick up this book. The previous two books, To Have and To Hoax and To Love and to Loathe were pointing at book three focusing on Lady Emily and Lord Julian. Lord Julian, despite his title, owns and operates a second-rate theater whose reputation he’s trying to improve. He sets his sights on marrying the upstanding and above reproach, Lady Emily to aid in that endeavor. She agrees to his offer of marriage if only to stop being the arm candy of an American thug and gaming hall owner.

I wished that this book would be rife with the liberty and freedom that working in theatre presents; that this book would be loosened from its expectation to follow the culture of the time period, but it did not. It was extremely laden in the “male savior” category with Emily being inwardly thankful that Julian could rescue her and her family from their current situation. Yes, she was free but really she was pulled from one cage into another, from her house and parental expectations, into a marriage where she still had to look and act a certain way. She wasn’t free until the end when she and Julian dispersed with the rules of their marriage and just enjoyed each other. In the category of “performative liberality,” this book also failed. Not only did it feel extremely heavy-handed for Emily to experience a female stagehand (gasp! behind a hand) and to have that character’s experiences reiterated to Emily from a 2nd (male) party, but also she meets a black woman, and in the one scene they share together, Emily is told the woman’s entire life story, including all the racism of times. It felt tokenizing and performative.

It’s probably a sign that I was more invested in if Julian would pull the horrendous Much Ado About Heaven, in favor of the society roast show all the women were pushing him to do. That’s a show I would not only see but want to work on. -Ford