Muse of Maiden Lane

 

The Muse of Maiden Lane (The Belles of London #4)- Mimi Matthews

Berkeley/Penguin

Release Date: November 19, 2024

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis:  Stella Hobhouse is a brilliant rider, stalwart friend, skilled sketch artist—and completely overlooked. Her outmodish gray hair makes her invisible to London society. Combined with her brother’s pious restrictions and her dwindling inheritance, Stella is on the verge of a lifetime marooned in Derbyshire as a spinster. Unless she does something drastic…like posing for a daring new style of portrait by the only man who’s ever really seen her. Aspiring painter Edward “Teddy” Hayes knows true beauty when he sees it. He would never ask Stella to risk her reputation as an artist’s model but in the five years since a virulent bout of scarlet fever left him partially paralyzed, Teddy has learned to heed good fortune when he finds it. He’ll do anything to persuade his muse to pose for him, even if he must offer her a marriage of convenience.   After all, though Teddy has yearned to trace Stella’s luminous beauty on canvas since their chance meeting, her heart is what he truly aches to capture….

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The final book in Mimi Matthews' Belles of London series features Stella Hobhouse, a brave rider and friend who knows if she doesn't marry soon she'll find herself buried in the quiet countryside forever. Thanks to her odd gray hair and lively personality, she's had more trouble than her friends when it comes to finding a suitor. Thinking if men could just look past her hair to her they might give her a chance, Stella decides to be daring and dye her hair while attending a houseparty with her friend Lady Anne, since noone else will know her there. 

Edward "Teddy" Hayes is a fustrated artist who briefly met his muse at a museum, only to lose her to his blunt speech. Now he's at a house party he doesn't want to attend and only knows his sister and brother-in-law. Deciding to spend most of his time painting and hiding away to avoid people and dealing with the annoyance of his wheelchair, he's as surprised as Stella when they meet again. 

Muse is a slow burn romance very different from what readers might generally expect- both from Matthews' normal books or traditional romance in general, but I thought it worked very well. At the heart of the story, both Stella and Teddy want independence. They want to discover who they are, what they are capable of in life. While they each start off thinking they need to chart their paths separately, by the end they've discovered that love can make them stronger together. Both have wanted to be truly seen for who they are and what they are capable of beyond their physical appearance- Stella's hair and Teddy's wheelchair. Even early on it is clear (to the reader anyway) that they see each other for who they are. The question is, how long will it take them to figure it out? The suggested marriage of convenience comes late in the book, which might annoy some people. After all, traditionally you have an early marriage of convenience and then love grows from that. But I enjoyed how Matthews played with the expectations and turned the idea into something new- rather like Teddy and his fellow painters were trying to do with what we now call Impressionist art!

One of my absolute favorite things in this book is how Teddy encourages Stella to be herself. Not to be small and quiet, but to be whatever she feels she is, because once they are married they only have to please themselves. That's the kind of support I want in a partner!

This is a story of two people finding their own way, discovering friendship and strengths within themselves that allow for a beautiful, trusting partnership of a loving marriage.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review