This is a 2,5 review rounded.
I didn't know the author and based on the synopsis and the first couple of chapters I confess I expected something different, more of a regency romp, instead this went deeper. That was not necessarily bad, but it was a bit misleading.
I really liked the heroine; she is an heiress, of commonbirth, and a marquess daughter's best friend (I was expecting this to feel misplaced, but it is explained well enough). Somewhat of a wallflower, Drusilla had a massive crush on her friend's step brother Gabriel and, thinking he would never care for her (he was courting someone else as the book begins) whenever they are together, she uses discussion and sarcasm as a shield; it all felt like nice witty banter to me, (even though the hero seems to think she hates him). When another man tries to abuse her, Gabriel goes to defend her, and instead they're tied in a compromising position, forced to be wed, and Gabriel forced into a duel with the duke who abused Drusilla.
Drusilla devotes much of her time and money to charitable work. Most of the time, when heroines of regency do this, it tends to feel cheap or unexplicable, but hers was well made. It was a shame only that, after marriage, this part of her was not showcased (but then again, there was a LOT going on)
Okay, that is done. Now I have to deal with it and talk about Gabriel I guess. Oh my God, he must have been the hero with the most stuff going on that I've ever seen. Gabriel (or Jibril) was the son and heir of the former sultan from Oran and a duke's daughter (who was abducted and forced into the marriage, after the sultan's passing, she later married a marquess and her story can be found in another book). In exile in England for the past five years, Gabriel let's go of his culture, his name and his language to adopt to his new life. He is very young (younger than most regency heroes at least), at 24. He is supposedly a bit of a rake, his name connected with much gossip as he is seen as somewhat exotic. He has two lovers in London, and his relationship/friendship with them is well shown. Normally, mistresses are mentioned, and not taken as a person, and I would have liked the gesture if there weren't SO much going on already.
okay, focus... As a foreigner, as a bastard (in the eyes of the ton), as the grandson of a duke and the step-son of a marquess, as someone connected to a child, Gabriel was so heavy... He understood and was driven by duty, acted like a jerk sometimes...but he was doing his best, I think.
As for their relationship - it was really sweet actually... The steamy scenes worked really well for me. They are both trying to make the best of their situation - Drusilla forced to be with someone she loves, but who does not love her and seems to keep visiting his mistresses even after married. And Gabriel, married to someone he thought hated him. Drusilla takes some things too personally (though she was mostly on the right side) and Gabriel's pride is not the best thing ever... but mostly it felt good. The only problem was, in order for the book to happen, that is, the problem that keeps them apart is ann utter LACK of communication, and it grew tiring...
I kept reading, the same way you would keep watching a trainwreck;
There was so much happenning - there was a duel, a lover, the mistresses, a kid, kidnapping, a villain, two villains, a spy, a mob of bandits, a clash of cultures, fight for power, ransom, betrayal, the prejudice (both for Gabriel's origin's and bastardy and for Drusilla's origin as a cit), the expectations that come from being forced into marriage - I said this before but there was SO MUCH going on, that the couple falling apart due to not sitting down and talking like human beings felt misplaced.
The last thing I want to talk about is a bit more sensitive. As probably expected from the fact that the hero was arab, from Oran in the middle of regency England, we need to talk about culture. Gabriel is often refered to as someone who is "good" because of his mother's (white) blood. From that can we infer that if not for that, his culture is "bad"? As a man said to have abused his mother and other women, I am not indulging Gabriel's father as someone who should have been acclaimed. Throughout the book, Drusilla defends Jibril when someone mention his 'barbaric' heritage, and Gabriel is written as someone proud of where he came from and sad to have to let it go. I don't think (or at least I hope not) that the author meant for it to be hurtful per se, but I believe the book could have thrived if other characters from Oran, from Gabriel's past, could have been shown, or at least mentioned, as examples of good people.
I kept thinking about the '9 to 5" movie from 1980. It's a feminist masterpiece and I adore it, but, in the end, the bad guy, the abuser, the villain, his punishment is to receive a promotion and work from Brazil (which he finds terrifying). I don't think anyone else noticed or cared. I don't think the writer thought twice about this, and wanted to make me feel bad. But, as a Brazillian, this hurt me somewhere south of my pride. I am not familiar with Oran culture, with their history, but it is important to remember someone is. Gabriel's representativeness is refreshing for the genre, but he is not much of a representative if white-washed and only seen as good as his mother's blood. These are waters to tread with care.

The cover is defiantly eye catching. I liked that there was a different background for Gabriel. I think the story focused on his background more than the heroine which was interesting, because I still wanted to know about her background. I liked that Dru was supposed to be this forward thinking woman but I think that aspect of her life was glossed over. I like the enemies to lovers trope which is the basic of this story. I however do not like the misunderstanding by not communicating. I did not start liking the couple until about 70% into the story. The ending where things in the story were getting interesting, seemed to end too abruptly. I wanted that part fleshed more. Dru was supposed to be the times feminist but she does not act like that for a majority of the story. Still I did end up liking Dru’s and Gabriel’s ending and I am quite curious about the next installment of the story.

Notorious by Minerva Spencer is an intriguing story of two people with starkly differing views on men and women and marriage. Drusilla and Gabriel are both compelling characters. I cheered for them and grew frustrated with them just like dear friends. Their starkly different viewpoints clash in their early days of their quick marriage, yet each tries to bridge the gap and achieve a compromise. Gabriel and Drusilla's vulnerabilities provides a dramatic background to their happily ever after. Their love story felt real and personal. The secondary characters add a depth and humour to Gabriel and Drusilla's tale (especially the tie to Minerva Spencer's Dangerous). I encourage others to take time and dive into this wonderful tale.

Another brilliant book by Minerva Spencer! She never lets her readers down.

Notorious takes off from Dangerous of the Outcast series. GABRIEL Marlington is the son of Mia, Marchioness of Exley, (if you have missed her book, DANGEROUS, historical romance fans, need to grab it) and her Sultan of Oran where she was held as his captive at the age of 14 until she escaped him 16 years later and entered polite British society, and she is the daughter of the powerful Duke of Carlisle, and brother to the bookish Marquess. After her marriage to the Adam de Courtney, the Marquess Of Exley (who has a significant past as revealed in their story, Dangerous), together they rescue Gabriel heir to the throne of Oran, from his murderous step brother, and he, after 7 years in England, is accepted by London ton, albeit grudgingly because of his powerful connections. Gabriel is considered a libertine (and yes, he has two French mistresses, and they have a cozy relationship which is based on strong friendship). He has a close relationship with his mother, and his half siblings. They story has many great moments of familial togetherness, we see the role of his step sister Eva Exley, who is also the close friend of the heroine Drusilla (a lonely, intelligent, heiress, albeit one who is in constant turmoil with her appearance esp when compared to the handsome Gabriel, whom she loves, but cannot seem to express it). She is brilliant heroine, but most of the time she mocks herself and Gabriel to hide her insecurities and vulnerability. Due to the machinations of the Visel, (who has his own story coming up next with Eva) Gabriel and Drusilla marry and the journey of verbal sparring, a hidden child, french mistresses, Intrigue from past betrothal and betrayals, and the story takes off by Ms. Spencer’s vivid narrative and characters that just grow on you. It’s hard to put the book down, although I had to, and caught up after dinner and went to bed late. [tg to wfh, and no rush hour Boston traffic:)].

There is Drusilla’s passion for philanthropy towards women and children. She strongly believes in women’s Independence, education, children and healthcare. Neatly woven in the narrative, is her mentor Mary Wollstonecraft and at one instance the authors brilliant witticisms shines through when she both evokes the best and worst of MW, when Gabriel cannot seem to get the last name right! Drusilla has her group of benefactors who run several homes for the improvement of women and children and amongst this group of devoted philanthropists nests the villain of the book..... there is a lot of good stuff in the book.

I am a huge fan of MS Spenser and her writing. She is not a frivolous author, who writes formulaic books. Her story telling is gripping because her characters are strong intellectuals who bind the narrative well. Go grab the book and enjoy!

Bon Appétit to great reading!

Absolutely brilliant!
Notorious is a great romance with completely relatable plot and dialogue for the time it was set in. A lovely masterpiece, showing the lives of married women in the past and today.

I enjoyed it. I can't wait to read more of Minerva Spencer's works

I'm not sure how I became so endeared by straight-up romances, but here I am! Spencer writes dialogue so well I makes me feel kind of bad about myself! A likable lead couple which is really all I can ask for.

Thank you netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Unfortunately I did not enjoy this historical romance novel. The back and forth with Claire and Gabriel left me feeling restless and exhausted. They just kept talking in circles with barely any sexual chemistry between them. Although Claire had a huge crush on Gabriel,her actions and constant demoralizing comebacks lead him to believe she hated him. He barely tolerates her. How is this romance? Disappointed.

Drusilla Clare is best friends with Lady Eva de Courtney. Both are most noteworthy as
Wallflowers. Drusilla has loved Eva's half brother Gabriel Markington ever since he came to England five years ago. Gabe was born in a harem, the son of the former sultan and the current Marquess of Exley's wife (Dangerous /The Outcasts Book 1). Drusilla considers herself unattractive and never imagines anything romantic from someone like Gabe. When he comes to Dru's rescue they find themselves quickly married, but it's a rocky start. Drusilla is afraid of rejection. but Gabe starts to really see his wife and understand her insecurities. These two definitely have no problem in the bedroom. An emotional rollercoaster with jealousy, kidnapping and a ransom that will bring to light what they will sacrifice for each other.

A very well written, steamy, slow burn Historical Romance with lots of internal and external drama. It does start out quite lighthearted with some witty banter between the H/h whilst at a ton Ball, but that stopped once they got to know one another and we get into the story. Our hero Gabriel is the son of Mia from 'Dangerous', so if you've read that book, then you have a better idea of his background as the son of a Sultan and an English mother. (She and her husband make brief appearances). This book, however, can be read as a stand-alone. Having read 'Dangerous' though, I feel it gave me a better understanding of Gabriel's personality, back-story and his place within his family and society. Our H/h are in their early 20's.

Due to an 'incident', (trying not to give spoilers), Gabriel and Drusilla have to marry. They don't know each other intimately at all, but wallflower Dru has held a torch for Gabe for about five years and his step-sister is her best friend. There's a lot of dramatics involving the marriage and misunderstandings between the H/h. There is a kidnapping and some bad guys. Drusilla is supposed to be active in helping poor children and charities, but we don't really see that - it's only referred to. Gabriel is used to have several mistresses at once after living in a harem, so he has that problem to deal with. The romance is slow burn and the sex scenes are tastefully written and very steamy. Their relationship is push/pull. Yes. No.

There were a few scenes I was looking forward to, especially the one when Drusilla was about to go visit Samil by herself, but it ended with her leaving the house, then the story cut to later, when she reflected on the meeting briefly. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall, so that was a bit disappointing. Several scenes were like that in fact and some problems were dealt with in a speedy fashion that seemed a bit like bow wrapping to me.

Eva vanished from the story too, which was strange, but I gather the next book is about her, so I'd really like to read that book and find out where she went. I felt I knew lots about Gabriel, but not a lot about Drusilla. Certainly it was duel POV, but I didn't get the feel of her personal life before the book began, apart from the feminist thing, which was not expanded upon.

I read an e-ARC, so my thanks go to NetGalley and the publisher for gifting it to me in return for my honest opinion. Overall I really did enjoy reading this book and I needed to finish it asap because I wanted to know what happened, so that's always a good thing. I would recommend it to lovers of historical romance, Ms Spencer is an excellent writer and the Historical details were good. In fact, I'm slowly reading through her back list as I find time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A Sultan’s son ... a rich merchant’s daughter ... lesbian mistresses ... kidnappings ... a best friend’s brother. ... a not so convenient marriage ...

Needless to say this book seems to have everything - too many things ...

Although I generally enjoyed the story, I found that Drusilla’s character just didn’t live up to my expectations. She is introduced as feminist but all that seems to go out the door as soon as she gets married and into bed with her hot husband - what happened to the strong willed woman we were introduced to ? Gabriel was deceptive ( an illegitimate son ?!) that he doesn’t mention to his Drusilla until much too late in my opinion; and that’s one of my several problems with him.

I would definitely give this series another chance with the second book - hoping the characters are a bit more likeable and the story not so convoluted !

Spoilers ahead!

The first Minerva Spencer book I read, Dangerous, was absolutely dull and had so much sex and no plot that I gave up not even halfway through.
This book, by some twist of NetGalley fate, was about the son of the heroine of Dangerous. Strangely, I actually really enjoyed this book, and Gabriel & Drusilla.
I did have a lot of complaints too though: I feel like there wasn't enough mention of Gabriel's heritage and not enough focus on the fact that he was raised as a Muslim and then had to convert to Christianity in order to be accepted. In fact, it was only briefly mentioned that he was raised in an Islamic community and then it seemed his religion was forgotten about for the rest of the book although there was a large focus on the fact he grew up in a harem. I also didn't really see the point of Samir, or of Maria and Giselle, other than to give the villain of the piece someone to kidnap.
As for Drusilla, she was a member of a Wollstonecraftian activist group although she didn't actually seem to participate in anything other than to throw money at charitable causes and seemed to completely forget about her principles as soon as she married, almost as if she wasnt the great feminist she had been portrayed to be at the beginning of the book.

That said, I enjoyed the relationship between the two and the way it developed.

I'm curious enough to want to read the next book in the series although the small excerpt I had did bother me slightly by the fact that Visel had a change of heart from ultimate vengeance to ultimate remorse in the space of a short walk. I also found Eva, who was obviously supposed to be rebellious and impulsive, to just be irresponsible, immature and vapid without any thought for hers or anyone else's safety or feelings.

However, on the whole, I enjoyed the story although it lacked the depth it could have had and I look forward to the next book to hope it proves my views from the excerpt wrong.

This was an okay read for me. The writing style was nice and kept me going, but some parts of the story and all of the background information about certain characters went completely over my head because of how little they contributed to the story itself. (This is apparently because it's a callback to other works by the author? I don't really know)

I think the characters were interesting, but I didn't completely understand the main characters and the development of their relationship because it just didn't seem intuitive to me how they got closer throughout the book? Like hello, we'll be married now. Suddenly, we're on good terms?

Certain elements of the book were genuinely fun to read, like the main female character's relationship with her best friend, but others felt like they didn't contribute so much to furthering the plot of the novel itself.

I think I would probably just describe this book as lukewarm? Not bad to read, but not something I feel like really made the hugest impact on me, even though reading historical fiction is kind of rare for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Kensington Books for the ARC opportunity!

1.5 Stars

I haven't read many historical romance books, but lately I've found a few that were super fun and very interesting to read, and when I saw this I thought I'd found another one: a female protagonist that refuses to follow society's conventions, an enemies-to-lovers relationship and witty banter? Sign me in!

Unfortunately, rather than engaging banter what we have for the first half of the book is open animosity between the protagonist couple, and then the relationship runs hot and cold and hot and cold again and I honestly lost interest. It didn't help that I wasn't particularly invested in any of the main characters either (but I did love Eva, and her ending was great!! I'm actually looking forward to reading her book). I did enjoy the writing, and although the story had too much drama for my liking, I believe this book will make fans of historical romance very happy.

Miss Drusilla Clare considers herself a reformer and doubts she’ll ever marry. That does not stop her attraction to her best friend’s brother and known rake, Gabriel Marlington. When Gabriel stops another man from accosting Drusilla, the two are caught in a compromising position and forced to marry.

The book blurb does not accurately depict the contents of this novel. This is the first book in the Rebels of the Ton series, however Gabriel is the son Lady Euphemia Marlington de Courtney from the previous book, Dangerous. In that story, Gabriel’s mother was kidnapped and sold into a harem. Gabriel lived the life of a sultan’s heir until his father died and Gabriel was smuggled out of the country in order to escape his tyrannical brother. This background helps to set up Gabriel’s behavior, conflicts, and his different view of relationships and sex.

Dru is hoping marriage will give her more independence, but Gabriel thinks a wife is his to command and becomes protective and possessive. There are a lot of misunderstandings because they make assumptions about the other’s motives instead of talking it through. When they do open up, the trust and relationship building improves. I give this book a 3.5 star rating.

* I received an ARC and this is my honest review. #Notorious #NetGalley

I liked the premise, but the male lead was unnecessarily cruel at multiple points and I honestly thought he didn't deserve Drusilla''s patience.

I have mixed feelings on this one. First, I didn't realize some of these characters are from one of her previous books until I went back and looked at the backcatalog blurbs. So even though this is the first book in a series and can be read alone, I did feel like there was a lot of family relationships that had backstory that was in play. I felt a little lost at first.

Another thing that was interesting, but I'm on the fence about if it added much to the love story was Gabriel being the ousted son of a sultan and there's both some political drama told as backstory and some prejudice he faces in English society, and some personal-ish grudges with a villian driving the story.

One thing that kept coming up was that Gabriel grew up expecting to have his own harem of wives, which his new wife keeps dwelling on. Plus he had/has a relationship with a pair mistresses (who are in love with each other). And oh yeah, there's his son via his former fiance. And his mom escaped the sultan and has a new family with a Marquess. And Duke grandfather in the mix somewhere. So yeah. There's A LOT going on here, which may make more sense if I had read the previous books.

And we haven't even gotten to the heroine Drucilla. She is a hot mess. A charity working, merchant daughter who is super rich but dowdy and sharp tongued and obviously hides behind her supposed feminist ideals because she has low self esteem and doesn't think she deserves marriage and a family with the uber-hot Gabriel, who she's been secretly in love with. She self-sabotages everything with him through most of the book. Then when he falls in love with her (because, sex?) she suddenly isn't this for hard feminist anymore. Gabriel has no pretense about the fact that his wife is his to command, etc. And Dru at first fights him on this, but then after the good sex, is like "that's cool." I just didn't like her but felt sorry for her because she just kept making things worse for herself.

I didn't even scratch the surface of this book. There's so much plot and external things happening, I didn't buy the love story at all. But it was certainly well written and the story, for all that was in there, seemed to move along. I would say that this is Gabriel's book. Dru's whole character seems in service of his story, and that's perhaps one reason this was only an ok read for me.

<I>*Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review *</i>

<b>3.75 stars</b>

Notorious, a piece of period romance, revolves around Drusilla - a sharp-tongued and strong-minded, but really somewhat insecure woman - and Gabriel, a witty and assured man who however struggles somewhat in London society due to his ethnically mixed background. Through a series of unfortunate circumstances, they end up having to marry each other in other to save their reputations, and not be ostracised from the <i>ton</i>.

This was very easy to read- I almost couldn't put it down! I quite enjoyed the banter between Gabriel and Dru, and the writing style was very engaging.

However, there were several points throughout the book where I really wished that Gabriel and Dru would just talk to each other about what they're thinking instead of retreating into their respective and flawed reasoning! And honestly I kind of felt that, while Dru was preaching all about female empowerment, in a lot of points she really didn't behave in a way that supported those ideas! I still really enjoyed this though!

An Strangely addictive page turner with a repetitively gullible, socially awkward, Weak, useless Heroine with a lying cheating husband and she needs someone to control her money and keep her out of trouble. No female power here.

I will not be reviewing Notorious on my blog. This was a do not finish for me. It was a dealbreaker for me that Gabriel had a child and kept it from Drusilla for so long, it was also a dealbreaker for me that he was in a poly relationship with two other women. Neither of these things are what I am looking for in a historical romance novel.

I tried to power through, but it just really irked me, and it made it really hard for me to find Gabriel likable. The only character I really cared for was Eva, so hopefully the next book in the series will be about Eva, and won't feature any of my dealbreakers!

Thank you Kensington for allowing me the chance to read an advanced copy of Notorious. And thank you for your understanding.