Beau Scamp

by C.M. Harris

"A very silly, very enjoyable, and very readable romp." — Kirkus Reviews

England, 1794: What a time to be alive!

Charlotte Goddard has spent her life performing. First, as Charlie, the stable hand raised in breeches by her highwayman father, and then as Beau Scamp, the notorious road thief whose reputation does considerably more work than her actual skills.

When a botched robbery brings her face to face with Lady Catherina Pemberton—the childhood friend Charlotte has loved since she was twelve—she finds herself talked out of fleeing to America to avenge her father’s death and instead talked into the most ill-advised disguise of her career: maid to the woman she’s desperately in love with, in the house she’s been robbing, and under the noses of everyone who wants her hanged.

A screwball Georgian caper with real blood in its veins. Beneath the wigs and pistols, a tender meditation on grief, class, and the difference between a hiding place and a home.

For fans of Emma R. Alban, TJ Alexander, and Cat Sebastian

Genres: LGBT, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Lesbian, Adult, Romance, Historical

270 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication October 13, 2026

About the author

CM Harris is the author of novels SENSE AND INSTABILITY, THE THICKET/SHE NEVER LEFT, MAIDEN LEAP, ENTER OBLIVION, and THE CHILDREN OF MOTHER GLORY

Her short stories and essays appear in O Magazine, The Fabulist Magazine, Escape Artists’ Pseudopod podcast, SALiT Magazine, Harrington Literary Quarterly, Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose, and Pride, and the anthology Coppice & Brake.

Her screenplay The Cost of Glory received a Gold Award for Best Concept Script and a Silver Award for Best Feature Script from the Queen Palm Film Festival. Her screenplay 'A Woman Unbecoming' was a semi-finalist at Horrorfest.

CM Harris lives in Minneapolis with her wife and their twins. She is also the lead singer/guitarist of the indie rock band Hothouse Weeds.

Reviews

[Rudi McKay]

This was such a fun surprise! I absolutely loved the combination of historical fiction, sapphic romance, secret identities, highwaymen, and just the right amount of chaos.

Charlotte/Charlie and Catherina were such a fantastic pair. I loved watching their relationship develop, especially with all the complications surrounding Charlotte's identity and the world they've been forced to navigate. There was something incredibly satisfying about watching these two women find each other and carve out a little space for themselves in a society that certainly wasn't designed for them.

And honestly, the whole highwayman angle made this even more entertaining. There is something ridiculously fun about a masked highwayman, a dangerous adventure, a little deception, and a sapphic love story all wrapped together.

The tone was one of my favorite things about this book. It's playful, romantic, adventurous, and wonderfully over-the-top at times. It never took itself too seriously, which made it incredibly easy to get swept up in the story.

As a lesbian reader, I especially loved seeing a sapphic historical romance where the women get to be complicated, bold, funny, adventurous, and completely in love.

A charming, entertaining, delightfully chaotic historical romance with plenty of heart. I had such a good time with this one!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[moon]

(Received an ARC from NetGalley)

I enjoyed this book very much! It was a nice, easy, and fun read that allows you to get lost in the late 1700s while watching the relationship of two women grow.

Charlotte and Catherina were both very fun characters. I loved seeing their relationship bloom and the lengths they were willing to go for each other. I also love the supporting characters being supportive. I can’t say I know the reactions to queerness entirely from a 1700s standpoint and but it was so nice to read about great support systems.

I’m glad I was able to read this!

[Emily]

Charlotte is an absolute mess in the best possible way and I loved the chaos of her being Charlie, Beau Scamp AND somehow ending up as Catherina’s maid. Like what could possibly go wrong? I loved Charlotte and Catherina together. The disguises, highwayman shenanigans and romance kept me entertained the whole time, but there was also way more heart to the story than I expected. Funny, sapphic, romantic and a little ridiculous. I had such a good time with this one!

[Fionna Guillaume]

Beau Scamp is pretty much sapphic-historical-romance perfection. It completely transported me in time, made me fall in love with dashing highwaymen, and introduced me to compelling, whole, and complicated characters who felt completely alive. I couldn't put this book down, and finished it in just a few nights.

The writing style and editing is absolutely flawless. No weird turns of phrase, typos, awkward descriptions… it just flows, picks you up, and carries you along for the journey. As with all truly well-written historical fiction, the tone and language set the scene, revealing details and everyday nuances of English life in the 1890's that made me feel as if I was there too.

I couldn't pick a favorite character between Charlie and Cat. They compliment one another, and their couple just works on every level. The ending is as satisfying as the story itself, which made me curious to read more from this excellent author. Five seriously heavy stars for Beau Scamp! I was fortunate to receive an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[R Evans]

The plotline in this novel is great, carefully crafted with nuances given early on but without acting as spoilers. The two leads are great, one a feisty highwayman who was a lad/lass, brought up as a male stable hand so that she could survive in an aggressive environment. The other a rich heiress who had a mind of her own. Of course the book promotes same sex relationships but also illustrates how class differences limit or influence your choices making this a worthwhile and enjoyable read.

[kody :3]

arc from netgalley !!

judging simply from the title and cover (the main reasons this book initially caught my eye), i should’ve known how funny this book was going to be. it is seriously one of the funniest books that i’ve read in a long time. the plot line was interesting and it kept me engaged. i had a lot of fun.

the romance was enjoyable. they were sweet and i was always rooting for them. it also ticked a box that i’m always looking for with sapphic romance which is butch characters. we need more, thank youuuu. i found the dual point of view interesting and i liked how one was in first person, but the other was in third person. it was overall just an enjoyable dynamic.

i will recommend this to a lot of people. probably whoever will listen.

[Sarah]

Very different and fun but also emotional. I liked the first person from Charlie and third person from Cat. A touch chaotic at times and I would have liked more interplay between Charlie and Cat before they fully own up to each other just to set the drama a bit.

Funny to see the author is from Minnesota!

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC

[Josh]

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

"What Papa failed to foresee was a daughter—whom he’d disguised as a boy when we arrived at Noyes Hall over a decade ago—falling arse-over-teakettle for their employer’s niece."

This was a entertaining historical fiction / romance, where you may go out to rob some gold and jewels, only to find someone else has stolen your heart....

I enjoyed the use of different perspectives (1st and 3rd) to make the two point of views feel different and give the characters more distinct voices. Charlotte was easily my favourite character, I loved their inner monologue (with the mostly unhelpful comments from their dead pa).

Overall this was a short but sweet read and a rather fun Georgian romp. If you like historical fiction this may be your cup of tea.

[Fran Sappharc]

An enjoyable romp! Some great lines….. I cannot say how accurate it is to the period but it was accurate enough for me. Clear voices and a clear plot. There were plenty of bits that made me smile.
I would advise picking this up to read when you have time to have quite a run at it, rather than a wee five minutes spare….. Not because it is difficult to get in to but because it is in the past and it is set in a very different time to now therefor I found it took a wee while to enter that world and then re-enter this!
It seems impossible that there will be a happy ending…. There is and really nothing left unresolved, although the ending could possibly have been expanded on.

[Silvia]

DNF @ 45%

The writing just didn't click with me

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos]

The Pistols Are Loaded, the Roof Is Leaking, and Apparently This Is Freedom
In “Beau Scamp,” CM Harris sends a wanted highwaywoman and a frustrated would-be doctor through disguises, duels, secret sex, maritime chaos, and Welsh home repair before allowing them the far less glamorous privilege of an ordinary life together.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | October 4th, 2026

Declarations of love are the easy part in CM Harris’s “Beau Scamp.” The harder business begins afterward, when two women in 1794 still need a roof, drinkable water, money, work, horses, neighbors with the tact to look away, and some explanation for why a wanted highwayman has vanished. Harris promises a sapphic Georgian romp and supplies masks, pistols, botched robberies, sexual confusion, a combustible masquerade, and plans whose chief qualification is that somebody has had one. What gives the comedy weight is simpler and less glamorous: a romance can end with a leap onto a departing ship, but a life together has to survive the next wet Tuesday.

England in 1794 finds Charlotte Goddard already overqualified in becoming someone else. Raised in breeches as Charlie, she has inherited from her executed highwayman father both horse sense and a taste for danger, then remade herself as Beau Scamp, a green-coated road thief whose legend performs rather better than she does. A failed robbery brings her back to Lady Catherina Pemberton, the childhood friend she has loved since twelve, and necessity produces the most ridiculous disguise of Charlotte’s career: maid to the woman she wants, inside a house she has been robbing, while various men would happily hang her. Catherina has the inverse problem. Charlotte survives by accumulating selves. Catherina, medically trained but barred from the profession she wants, is being narrowed toward one respectable future: wife.

Most disguise stories eventually offer the comfort of subtraction: take off the mask, the coat, the false name, and there, supposedly, is the truth. Harris’s best scene refuses that arithmetic. Catherina, trying to determine which Charlotte she prefers, brings out Beau’s clothes. Maid’s dress off. Linen shirt on. Breeches, waistcoat, green velvet coat, boots, red cravat, tricorne. The binding is there too. Charlotte leaves it unused. The omission matters. Beau’s swagger can be reclaimed without Charlotte’s body having to disappear for the persona to work. When she finally says, “Ah, it’s nice to be home,” the word home attaches itself not to naked authenticity but to an arrangement of clothes, posture, memory, appetite, and choice.

Even the sentence that follows refuses Catherina’s original question. She kisses Charlotte, and “all the possible Charlottes kissed back.” Catherina has asked for the singular true self; the narration answers with a plural. Earlier Charlotte explains that her father first dressed her as a boy for protection, then quietly adds the more consequential fact: “I prefer it.” Shame arrives afterward, as something she has learned she ought to feel. Harris avoids the tidier revelation in which a woman in trousers must either be decoded as disguise or translated into one definitive category. Charlotte becomes clearest when the novel allows her to remain several things at once.

The same habit governs Charlotte’s voice. She opens one chapter by announcing that she ought to supply a noble explanation for her scandalous behavior, then scraps nobility and admits that she spent forty-five minutes polishing a saddle because she wanted to stare across the paddock at Catherina. This is how her first person moves: flourish, qualification, interruption, puncture. She narrates as if embarrassment will accrue interest unless converted into anecdote quickly. The jokes are not a decorative layer over the grief of watching her father hanged. They are one of the ways she takes possession of what happened after the fact, when possession during the event was impossible.

Rather than giving Catherina the same instrument, Harris places her in a quieter close third person. The difference changes what each heroine can do on the page. Charlotte addresses us, invents names, edits herself, punctures her own grandeur, turns disaster into a yarn. Catherina is more often caught thinking within rooms and futures other people have prepared for her. She envies the men who disappear after dinner to discuss politics and finance while her medical training remains something they may praise without ever treating it as a profession. Charlotte is constantly composing herself. Catherina must first notice the composition in which she has already been assigned a part.

In one of the novel’s earliest rehearsals of that problem, Lord Geoffrey Beresford talks about expanding turnpikes, toll gates, Bow Street Runners, and the taming of the roads. Catherina calls the prospect “caging the entire city.” Geoff answers that a cage keeps danger out as well as people in. He is not wrong, which is why the image survives. Gates can protect. Houses can shelter. Marriage can bring money and standing. Secrets can keep people alive. The argument is not freedom good, safety bad. It is about the price hidden inside safety, and who gets to decide whether the price is acceptable.

Privilege makes the same argument comic and ugly at the masquerade. From the servants’ side of the house, Charlotte peers through paneling into a ballroom where a mock Beau Scamp rides a false horse, steals kisses, and turns her dangerous life into aristocratic entertainment. He is not even wearing the right green. Then comes the harder thought: “They’ll never let you through those doors, Charlie. Ever.” Soon the real Beau rides into actual fire, blades, gunshots, and pursuit, while the guests continue to experience danger partly as spectacle. They can borrow Charlotte’s risk for an evening. She can be hanged for it.

A subtler trap is Geoff himself. Harris could have made him cruel, stupid, possessive, or conveniently repellent. Instead he is decent enough to make Catherina’s refusal expensive. The mouse-house sequence exploits that choice beautifully. Wearing Geoff’s emerald ring, Catherina imagines accepting him: a child she would genuinely love, servants, rooms, discreet affairs, perhaps some medical work at the edges of the household, and the tiny house from childhood eventually placed in a nursery. The prose slides into the conditional future. She would kneel beside the child; she would remember Charlotte; she would struggle not to cry. Catherina does not merely consider the compromise. Grammatically, she lives decades of it before anything has happened.

Part of what makes the passage painful is that almost nothing in the imagined life is monstrous. The child is loved. Geoff is kind. The carpet is thick. A maid dusts the toy. Charlotte survives as an anecdote, “the girl who loved horses,” until Catherina recognizes “the precise mechanism by which a woman folds herself into the life that the world demands of her.” It is a fine sentence and also evidence of Harris’s most persistent bad habit. The mouse house has already made the point. Its tiny bed, hidden farewell note, future dust, imagined child, and imported carpet have staged surrender more delicately than the explanatory sentence that follows. Harris sometimes tells us what an object has just taught us.

After that, the service motif keeps the novel from confusing self-direction with never needing anybody. Charlotte experiences maid service as bodily humiliation: lowered eyes, curtsies, obedience, work performed beneath another person’s authority. After she is shot, the relation reverses. Catherina follows her, treats the wound, manages the people around her, sleeps on a straw pallet, feeds her, and keeps vigil. Charlotte finally sees the connection between the service she resented giving and the service Catherina has freely chosen to give. Her thought shrinks to one line: “To serve me, so that I should live.” The sentence is plain because the revelation is practical. Love here is not release from obligation. It is the chance to make obligation reciprocal.

Desire settles even less than Charlotte hopes. Harris gives the women their long-delayed night together, and one small object keeps the larger argument alive: before sex, Catherina removes Geoff’s emerald ring. By morning it is back on her hand. Only then does she propose her humane compromise. Charlotte can come to Yorkshire as a stable hand, work toward becoming a farrier, live nearby, and remain Catherina’s lover in private while Lady Beresford fulfills the respectable life expected of her. Catherina hears safety. Charlotte hears someone else retaining control of the terms. “I love you too much to be your secret,” she says, before returning Geoff’s first image in sharpened form: “Your solution is a cage with better wallpaper.”

If Catherina’s mistake is to overvalue protection, Charlotte’s is to overvalue motion. Her alternative remains America, Carleton Marley, revenge, and the fantasy of needing nobody badly enough to be trapped again. Catherina is right that Stuart Goddard’s vendetta does not have to become his daughter’s inheritance, even though the solution she offers is inadequate. Later, hunted through narrowing space, Charlotte hears her dead father’s voice tell her that this is what the end feels like: nowhere left to run. “I’m not you,” she answers. Escaping the hangman will require more than riding farther. She has to stop mistaking her father’s unfinished business for her own future.

Much of the novel’s architecture consists of turning these disputes into events. The masquerade is its biggest outward caper but not its emotional climax. After it come injury, nursing, sex, disagreement, separation, then a pursuit in the opposite direction: Catherina racing toward Charlotte. Chapter Twenty-Four crowds the Bristol dock with bells, ropes, officials, passengers, green water, shouted orders, and the memory of parents lost at sea. The syntax grows busier as the ship pulls away. Then the noise drops out: “She leapt.” Chapter break. Harris withholds the landing, so for one suspended instant the decision matters more than whether it succeeds.

Immediately the epilogue starts damaging the grandeur. Catherina clears the gap by inches, Charlotte catches her, a sailor grabs her legs, a sheep bleats, and the captain begins a lecture on maritime rules. The grand gesture acquires a fare. This return from terror to embarrassment is Harris’s usual comic reflex at its best. At other moments Charlotte produces the next joke so quickly that grief or panic loses the second of silence it might have used. Here the timing is exact. The leap gets to be frightening before the book makes it ridiculous.

The supporting cast is where that generous comic reflex occasionally lets pressure out of the story too quickly. Geoff survives because his decency complicates Catherina’s choice, and Florence has enough appetite and history to feel like more than an approving aunt. Elsewhere function shows through. Bess needs money and receives it. Miss Chester turns out to possess exactly the knowledge required to protect Charlotte. Former obstacles become discreet allies. The problem is not kindness. Harris has simply trained us to notice how costly safety is, so each late rescue registers like another bill being quietly covered.

Real eighteenth-century history makes the Welsh solution less fanciful without making it less dependent on privilege. Cadw, the Welsh Government’s historic-environment service, records that Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby resisted marriage, attempted to flee Ireland together disguised as men in 1778, and settled in Llangollen in 1780, where they lived together for nearly fifty years. By the fictional events of “Beau Scamp” in 1794, the Ladies of Llangollen had already spent fourteen years building an unconventional household in Wales. The parallel need not prove direct influence to be useful. It shows that Harris’s destination has a historical analogue, and also that such lives were easier to sustain with money, status, and sympathetic networks behind them.

One historical alignment also sharpens the final choice of work. The Royal Veterinary College traces the Veterinary College, London, to 1791 and its first four students to January 1792; its archive records the Odiham Agricultural Society’s effort to place farriery on “rational scientific principles.” Harris places Charlotte’s inherited farrier knowledge beside Catherina’s medical training at almost exactly the moment British veterinary practice was beginning to organize itself as a profession. Their adjoining workshop and animal surgery are not decorative occupations supplied after the kiss. They make expertise, income, and usefulness part of the household’s survival.

Perhaps the epilogue’s best pages arrive before that household is secure. The Welsh property leaks. The well rope has rotted through. Pots and a tin basin catch rain in what Charlotte calls a “haphazard geometry.” Food runs short enough that Catherina learns to shoot. After a day of hauling furniture and scrubbing years of dirt from the floor, Charlotte tentatively offers her an escape back to comfort. Catherina refuses: “We are equals in this.” Equality acquires a pleasantly unromantic vocabulary here: wet stone, hunger, exhaustion, burnt meat, bad repairs, and somebody still having to fetch the pot.

Of course, Harris then makes the surrounding world cooperate somewhat faster than the earlier danger has taught us to expect. Florence sends supplies, books, Tedmund and Tilly. Geoff is gracious about being jilted. Bess prospers. The locals appear willing to live beside two suspiciously inseparable horsewomen. Most conveniently, Miss Chester reveals that she always knew Charlotte was Beau Scamp, spreads the story that Charlie died fleeing north, and gets the wanted posters destroyed. Any single development suits the novel’s comic generosity. In accumulation, they soften the resistance of a story that has spent considerable energy demonstrating why Charlotte cannot simply decide to be free.

Under that convenience sits a contradiction worth keeping. Charlotte and Catherina do not reach a place beyond dependence. Their life rests on Catherina’s inherited land, Florence’s supplies, Miss Chester’s lie, village discretion, practical skills, money, horses, and each other. Even Charlotte’s legal survival depends upon somebody else authoring a useful fiction about her death. What changes is not the existence of obligation but its arrangement. The women gain enough room to decide which household to build, which work to perform, which risks to share, and which stories about themselves they can live with.

Look closely, then, at what becomes of Beau Scamp. Charlotte does not ceremonially destroy the mask, renounce trousers, expose a singular self, or become respectable. Catherina eventually rides astride in trousers of her own. Charlotte becomes a farrier. The villagers likely know more than politeness requires them to say. Beau survives, but the job description changes. The persona no longer has to do the daily work of keeping Charlotte alive. The legend can circulate at a safer distance from the woman who invented it. That is subtler than simple visibility. Some lives become possible not because every secret is announced, but because secrecy stops organizing every intimate decision.

On the book as a whole, I land at 87/100, corresponding to 4/5 Goodreads stars under my rubric. Its pleasures are immediate, but its stronger achievement is architectural: disguises, roads, service, rings, houses, wounds, horses, and professions return with altered meanings rather than merely recurring. The deductions are real. Harris sometimes explains a metaphor after dramatizing it beautifully; several secondary figures become especially useful just when the plot needs them; Charlotte’s comic velocity occasionally outruns emotional stillness; and the final social world is kinder than the earlier stakes prepare us to expect. The book remains strong because those weaknesses occur inside a design that usually knows where its pressure points are.

Stories, in any case, have never been harmless in “Beau Scamp.” A reputation gives Charlotte power and then makes her easier to hunt. Aristocrats turn her danger into costume. Catherina nearly accepts a future in which Charlotte would survive as a story told to a child. Miss Chester finally saves her by inventing another one: Charlie Goddard is dead. At the end, Catherina rides across their Welsh property in trousers while Charlotte and Tedmund supposedly let her win. “Or so the story goes.” Charlotte now has roofs to mend, horses to shoe, a lover who argues back, work that will still be waiting tomorrow, and enough ordinary life that bravado has become optional. Beau can keep the green coat, the road, and the impossible reputation. Charlotte gets the ordinary life. Beau gets the story.

[Sam]

Picked this up because the subtitle made me laugh. Then I read the first page and I was all in from there. Charlotte is one of my fav MCs yet. She's funny and reckless and kind of heartbreaking. She talks to her dead fathers ghost which sounds like a gimmick but it works. There are so many great lines and ideas going on under the surface. I enjoyed the dual POV. Charlotte's voice is messy and personal and Catherina's is at a cool distance. The masquerade scene was one of my favorites, as was the Marley confrontation and the leap. If you like Kit Webb or Gentleman Jack you will like Beau Scamp. I'm hoping for more like this one.

[Holly]

Charlotte Goddard has been going by Charlie for as long as anyone can remember. Her father told her it would be safer to be seen as a boy. But, what did that man know of safety? He was hanged a year ago for being a highwayman. But, subjugated by a wealthy family for generations, Charlie has continued his father's legacy by presenting as a highwayman who steals riches and romances willing ladies. But when his childhood friend, Lady Catherina Pemberton realizes that not only is Charlie the infamous Beau Scamp, but Charlotte, life gets much more complicated. Adding more complexity, Charlie/Charlotte has loved Catherina since they were children. And, unbeknownst to Charlie/Charlotte, Catherina knows that only women excite her romantically. But, can the two find a way to be together, support each other, and escape any societal expectations that may exist for women of their respective stations?

Author CM Harris has done an impeccable job of providing enough historical context to give Beau Scamp a profound sense of reality, but also writes with such passionate prose that readers will maintain hope that the two women can find a true way to believe in each other as well as establish a true life together.

While "Charlie" and Catherina come from impressively different socioeconomic classes, they do both feel restrained by the expectations of their sex and their station. Charlie believes that no one who is rich truly perceives those poorer than them and could not possible care about their plights--so taking their money and any of their morals is well within her rights. Catherina believes she must find a way to fit in with upper society or all of her life will be for naught. Yet, even with a convenient offer from a man who is also looking for an easy relationship knowing that they cannot be true loves, Catherina feels that she yearns for more.

Harris has portrayed each of her characters with vital clarity. Yes, there are villains in her story, but there were evil people like that in the late 1700s (and, as one could point out, there are still in the this millennium). However, Harris also shows how queer people and allies have existed, even if their lives, choices, and advocacy looked different than they do today.

Too often, queer characters (especially those portrayed in historical novels) meet untimely and/or horrific ends. Harris shows how two women, who are deeply in love, could find a way to commit their lives to each other and make a meaningful life together.

Yes, Beau Scamp is a historical romance novel with enticing and exciting intimate moments (and this alone is no small feat), but it is more than that: it is a reminder that the queer community has always existed, and will continue despite any obstacles erected by cruel actors. "Beau Scamp" is both an erotic and an empowering read.

[Phoebe Wilkes]

3.5, actually. Because although I didn´t love this, I quite liked it (might read more of this author, I see the potential).

This is the story of Charlie (Charlotte), who works as a stable hand for some Lady Pemberton but also has this -I´m going to call it hobby, because really, she´s hella bad at this- where she´s also a road thief. Then, there is the love interest, Cat (whose Lady Pemberton´s niece, alledgedly knows about medicine and is Charlie´s crush since the world is world).

Now that we made the setting clear (it´s 1794, btw, and I love historical fiction), let me tell you a few things...

I was not a fan of the narration, and it was not because Charlie´s POV was in 1st person while Cat´s was in 3rd person; it was because it sounded weird at times. As if you´re trying really hard to get a historical tone out of it, with words and odly put phrases. But... at the same time, a lot of dialogues and things that happened withing the story, read very YA. So, I don´t know, maybe it´s a me thing. It clearly didn´t bother me as much as to stop reading.

I was amused to find out Charlie was an awful delinquent, always having bad luck and getting into trouble. And I also liked how things didn´t improve when Cat hired her as her maid and she proved to be the worst at that too.
Overall, I think it was a good character work, what the author did in this novel; not only about Charlie, but about Cat too (got to love indepent women in historical plots).

That said, as for things I didn´t enjoy... All the plot about Cat trying to get married to some aristocrat, and those aristocrats themselves (which is a shame, because narration tries really hard for you to like them, and it is true that they´re queer friendly and have some good qualities but... it icked me the wrong way when they dismissed Cat´s knowledge in medicine, and also all that plan -with Florence´s blessing- of pretty much using Cat as just a body available for having children. Urgh).
Anyway, that is mostly what I didn´t like. Then there is this scene near the end with Cat putting in practice her medical knowledge (at last!) but I didn´t find it realistic (this is most definitely not a me thing).

But anyway! Liked the book. Don´t know if I´d read again, but I´d definitely check out more stories by this author.

[Rowan Womble]

This is an absolute riot!

I really didn't want to put this down at any point. In part because I spent the whole time horrified to find out how it was going to end. Also in part because it's absolutely hilarious—top tier humor. My wife was very confused because I don't generally actually laugh out loud at things I read, but I couldn't help giggling at several of the lines.

Charlie's an irreverent little lad-lass and a very bad highwayman, but she's very good at giving women what they want, and I respect her for that.

One of my favorite parts was when she goaded a horse into assisting with her robbery with the promise of "an obscene quantity of carrots," only to get kicked by said horse, who still got at least something for her work.

And the way these two idiots yearn for each other is breathtaking. Forbidden romance at its finest. I don't even read historical fiction usually, but this was an absolute treat and a great first foray into the genre (at least the version of it without magic involved).

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Abby May]

3⭐️

It’s 1974. Charlotte “Charlie” is a stable hand, with a double life as a (really bad) highwayman, Beau Scamp, whose reputation far exceeds their actual skills as a thief. A robbery gone wrong brings Charlie face to face with Lady Catherina, a childhood friend who Charlie is in love with, who skews all of Charlie’s plans.

This was a super fun read. The premise is hilarious and I really enjoyed Beau Scamps antics. The romance was also incredibly sweet and I really liked how their story ended.

I found the prose a little hard to get in to - nothing to do with the author and everything to do with my own attention span adapting to the language that was used and the dialogue (which was actually very funny, I just felt like I had to read more closely to understand what was being said). I do think this perhaps lowered my overall enjoyment of the book, however I still enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who likes a historical comedy with a bit of sapphic romance.

Thanks to NetGalley and Last Laugh for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

[Sid]

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Last Laugh for approving me for this ARC! The premise sounded so fun to me so I was really excited to read it, and while I did enjoy it overall, I think it ultimately left me wanting a little more.

I think if it had been a bit longer, there could have been more time spent developing the relationships between all of the characters. A lot of the time they felt like they were just kind of existing in the same space and going about their own lives rather than actually interacting in ways that pushed the story forward.

That being said, the writing was really witty and I did really like the two main characters individually. It was definitely a fun and easy read, I just think there could have been a bit more depth to it.

[Cheyenne]

This was such a fast little read! Was intriguing how it went from 1st person to 3rd person between the main characters! Charlie and Catherina were really just meant for each other and I am glad even with the time period that they found a way to actually make that happen! It didn’t take itself too seriously which I enjoyed! Definitely add it to your TBR

Thankful to have received an eARC from Last Laugh and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own