Reputation: ‘If Bridgerton and Fleabag had a book baby’ Sarra Manning, perfect for fans of 'Mean Girls'

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Aah! But, enter one super enthusiastic 14-year-old Grace and one grumpy and unresponsive Aster and top it all off with hot (even hotter without his shirt, right Akia?!) single dad Captain Edwards, argh. Everything about this made me so happy. Bigger question of her was not about the rejection she feels. She still have issues to fit in the gilded world her friend Frances introduced her. If she cannot adjust in the rituals, the forms, the traditions and the rules she’s forced to obey, what will happen to her? There’s nothing prim or proper about Lex Croucher’s dazzling debut novel, Reputation which is so boldly, audaciously modern in its portrayal of 19th-century mean-girl culture that I kept waiting for someone to inform the heroine that on Wednesdays, they wear pink...Filled with humor and charm, Reputation is not always an easy read, but it’s a vivid and fascinating one. And it’s definitely not quaint." I loved this story - think Jane Eyre meets Bridgerton, but more difficult eldest Child than mad wife in the attic plus it’s forty years earlier and with a supporting cast who are comedy gold. Oliver in particular is a total sass master. Not to say that this is a state-of-society novel, as it's very much a character study, and a character and relationship driven story. The reader is simply made aware of the society around Georgiana, and her role in it as both as both a helpless cog and an active agent. We watch Georgiana develop for both better and worse, and the development of her various relationships as she becomes entrenched within the Polite Society (which is in reality, very unpolite) to which she so aspires.

It’s a little under a year since I read @Lex’s first book and, honestly? They just keep getting better. Compulsively readable, hysterically funny, and touchingly relatable casting genuinely human characters who are clearly more than a little Neurodiverse chafing against the stifling manners of regency England. I'd been seeing Lex Croucher's books around for quite a while and had previously read and enjoyed Gwen & Art Are Not In Love, so when I had the opportunity to read Trouble (the blurb sounded right up my street!) I jumped at the chance. With a focus on female friendships and self-identity, Reputation is a fun, touching and terrifically improper novel, perfect for fans of Austen and romcoms. Whilst Georgiana and Thomas's relationship was one of my favourite aspects of the novel, perhaps the most interesting dynamic is between Georgiana and Frances. Croucher captures the dizzying excitement of a new friendship, especially with someone you regard as outgoing and popular, and the way this can crumble from beneath you if there's a misunderstanding about who the other person really is. We delve into the dangers on transactional friendship, and the way that aspects like class and hierarchy come between them. It's frenemies excellence.A fierce, fresh, feminist Regency romcom that is brilliant on friendship and fitting in. It is funny, surprising and deliciously romantic, and the dialogue truly shimmers." It was always his father’s hope that Valentine would marry Miss Arabella Tarleton. But, unfortunately, too many novels at an impressionable age have caused her to grow up…romantic. So romantic that a marriage of convenience will not do and after Valentine’s proposal she flees into the night determined never to set eyes on him again.

Both romance and mystery fans will find their bookish match with Manda Collins’ quippy Victorian tale with a whodunit twist. This was not how fresh starts began in stories—and Georgiana had read a lot of them. A fortnight ago, she had dragged a trunk twice her weight to her aunt and uncle’s house, full of the tomes she had been unable to part with from home. In all the books she’d read in which a heroine started over in a new town or village or castle, she had immediately stumbled upon a series of daring adventures, or got dramatically lost on the moors, or swooned into the arms of a passing (and very handsome) gentleman.

1. Reputation – Lex Croucher 

Abandoned by her parents, middle-class Georgiana Ellers has moved to a new town to live with her dreary aunt and uncle. At a particularly dull party, she meets the enigmatic Frances Campbell, a wealthy member of the in-crowd who lives a life Georgiana couldn’t have imagined in her wildest dreams. Thomas Hawksley– A friend of Jeremiah’s who seems more reserved and stays away from the trouble everyone else seems to get into.