She asks her former fiancé – who jilted her once he learned of her sister’s disgrace – for help, but he refuses and as she is storming out of his house, bumps into the last man on earth she would have considered helpful or trustworthy, the deliciously handsome but highly disreputable Mordecai Black, bastard son of the late Earl of Dereham.

But when Eleanor receives a months-old note telling her that Sophia is in London – in Seven Dials – she wants to go to her immediately, regardless of the fact that it’s one of the most dangerous areas in the city. Eleanor knows what she will chose the ability to locate missing people, and with only a few days to go, is impatient for the faerie’s visit so she can use her gift to find her younger sister, Sophia, who eloped with her lover some months earlier and has now gone missing. Miss Eleanor Wrotham is counting the days until her twenty-third birthday, because then she will be able to choose a magical gift from Baletongue, the malevolent and pitiless faerie godmother who is bound to deliver a supernatural power to the females of her family line as the result of an ages-old curse. Ruining Miss Wrotham is laced with gentle humour, sensuality and tenderness as we watch our heroine discover surprising truths about herself, her wants and her desires, while struggling with her growing feelings for a man she should have no feelings for at all. Larkin is a fabulous storyteller with the ability to create memorable, likeable characters and inject new life into well-used tropes by sprinkling in a bit of magic and whimsy while firmly grounding her story in the familiar – to historical romance fans at least – world of early nineteenth century England. As she has demonstrated in all the books in this series, Ms. This fifth instalment in Emily Larkin’s Baleful Godmother series is a charming and beautifully romantic road-trip story that pairs up a most unlikely couple.

Within the Ward by Emily Larkin