The Lady Most Willing…

The Lady Most Willing is the 2012 follow up to The Lady Most Likely, the collaborative Regency romance project Julia Quinn launched with Eloisa James and Connie Brockway. The setup is even more outlandish than the first book and is a pleasure to watch the three writers work with. Three brides for three brothers, except the brides have been kidnapped from a Christmas ball by an aging Scottish laird who has decided that his three nephews need wives whether they want them or not.

The Comte de Rocheforte, Captain Neill Oakes, and Lord Byron Wynter find themselves at Finovair Castle in the dead of a Scottish winter, snowed in with three captive ladies and an uncle who is not letting anyone leave until at least one couple agrees to marry. Each of the three writers takes one couple and writes their story, with the connecting frame keeping the larger plot moving and the three sections weaving in and out of each other across the days at the castle. The result is a coherent novel rather than just three connected novellas, and the three writers’ distinct voices give each romance its own flavor while the wider story pulls them together.

Quinn writes the lightest of the three sections, in the comedic register her Bridgerton readers know. James writes the most sensual, with her usual sharp edged heroines. Brockway writes the most emotionally weighted of the three, with characters carrying real interior lives that the limited page count cannot fully explore but can certainly suggest. The transitions between sections are smoother than collaborative romance projects often manage.

For fans of any of the three writers, this is a fun chance to see how the others work. For readers new to historical romance, the format makes the book a particularly good entry point. Three different writers’ takes on the genre in one volume, with a Christmas castle full of nineteenth century romantic chaos as the connecting thread.