Lotte R. James’ A Lady on the Edge of Ruin isn’t billed as one of the Gentlemen of Mystery series, but it’s tied to it through the heroine, Lady Mary Spencer, who is the sister of Henry, Marquess of Clairbourne (The Marquess of Yew Park House) and long-time friend of Freddie Walton (The Gentleman of Holly Street). I didn’t realise Lady wasn’t really a standalone when I decided to read it for review, and as I read, I realised that although there are sufficient details given about important past events, I was missing background information about what those events revealed about Mary.  This is given later, but it meant I spent the first part of the book feeling a bit adrift.

Lady Mary is “An unblemished rose of England, a paragon. Intelligent, powerful, wealthy, she was everything she was meant to be.” She’s thirty and unmarried by choice, and is a member of one of society’s most respectable and powerful families, and it’s largely due to her power and influence that the family has weathered a couple of recent scandals (see the Gentlemen of Mystery series). But beneath the icy-cool and ultra-proper façade burns frustration, bitterness and electrifying, crackling rage, emotions she is finding it harder and harder to keep hidden and that no-one, not even her closest family members, even suspect her of harbouring. For Mary chose this path. She made a conscious decision when she was just seventeen that she would be seen only as she wished to be seen, that to live the life she wanted to live she would need to aquire the sort of quiet power that would grant her safety and freedom, the power afforded her by information, secrets, promises, favours, and intangible influence, the power to ruin or raise up. Of late, however, all the negative emotions eating at her – doubt, fear, anger, frustration – are in danger of boiling over and if that happens she risks losing everything she’s worked so hard for.

Luca Guaro came to England from Italy thanks to the generosity of his ‘patron’ Deirdre, Lady Granville. He and the widowed countess were lovers briefly, but that ended a while back and although society presumes their relationship continues to be a sexual one, they have, in fact, settled into a deep and affectionate friendship. Luca and Mary have had a passing acquaintance since he first came to London two years earlier and as she and Deirdre move in the same circles, their paths have crossed a few times. But although Luca was immediately captivated by her elegance and her beauty – much the same as everyone else - he also sensed something more beneath the lovely surface that drew him like a moth to a flame - and which continues to do so.

Mary is not unaffected by Luca’s obvious charms – he’s gorgeous, he’s kind, solicitous, and amusing, too – but tells herself that forming any kind of relationship with a kept man would damn her in the eyes of society, and she just can’t afford that. And anyway, she knows full well how to scratch that particular itch when she feels it; she’s no simpering virgin and has perfected the art of indulging in very discreet liaisons when she feels the need. And yet, her irritating attraction to Luca just won’t go away – and worse, she’s fairly sure he actually cares for her, and that will never do.

Mary is an interesting, if not especially likeable, heroine at first. But that’s okay – I prefer characters with light and shade to those who are practically perfect in every way, and the author articulates Mary’s blistering inner rage really well. I admired her determination to be independent, to live her life as she wanted and to do whatever she had to do to ensure that she could do that. I also liked that Mary is sufficiently self-aware to recognise that she’s at a kind of crossroads in her life, that she has to decide what she wants her future to be – to continue to be one of society’s kingmakers, a path she will almost certainly walk alone and unknown to all but herself, or if it’s time to set aside the paragon, let go of the anger, and make a happier life for herself. But over a decade of conditioning is hard to simply throw off, and she fights her feelings for Luca pretty much every step of the way.

Luca (who is twenty-two to Mary’s thirty) is a lovely beta hero - handsome, charming, steadfast and supportive – and he’s a talented artist, but other than that, what we know of him, we know because of how he relates to Mary. He’s very insightful and seems to instinctively know what she needs from him, but he’s just a bit too good to be true.

Even so, they have solid chemistry and I was enjoying their developing romance until the pacing started to flag around the middle. There’s a lot of internal monologuing from Mary about her fears over being able to maintain her place in society, and of what she’ll become if she continues on as she is; as she thinks about how Luca calms and soothes her and how being with him openly could hurt her position. We learn about the traumatic event that helped set her on her path to make herself unassailable, and how she continues to try to help other victims – but the story gets bogged down in repetition and her indecision over Luca.

I reached the three-quarters mark knowing there had to be something bad coming, because things had reached a good place with a quarter of the book still to go! Sure enough, the author then goes for the third-act break up by pulling the old villain-threatens-to-tell-all chestnut, with someone determined on revenge threatening to expose a secret Mary has worked hard to keep unless she gives up Luca and her chance at happiness forever. So the last quarter of the book is composed almost entirely of woe-is-me hand-wringing and stoic resignation followed by a very convenient family-to-the-rescue plan, which I really didn’t care for.

So while I enjoyed Mary in all her complexity and liked Luca because he’s just, well, so likeable, the third-act crisis is melodramatic to the max and the resolution isn’t much better. There’s also a massive problem with the writing, because... it seems that… Lotte R. James… has never met… an ellipsis… she didn’t… think she should… include in… her book. They appear on every page (on my Kindle) - honestly, I counted EIGHT on one page alone - and it got very distracting very quickly.

When I started reading A Lady on the Edge of Ruin, I really thought I’d be giving it a B or higher, but sadly, the fascinating heroine isn’t enough to compensate for the writing and pacing issues or for the fact that the last quarter feels like an entirely different book. I might read this author again – and will hope she’s curbed her passion for ellipses – but I can’t really recommend this book.