Professors Amelia Tarrant and Caleb Sterling have been soulmates since they met as children at boarding school\u2014he an orphan, she the neglected child of indifferent academics. They grew up together and became historians together. But double standards plague even the zany magical universe they inhabit and a stray moment of platonic touching sets tongues wagging. With Amelia\u2019s job always at risk in a sexist academic environment, she and Caleb decided to act like enemies so no one realizes the strength of their attachment. Pretending to hate each other is wearing on them, however, and the magical disruptions that accompany their \u201cspats\u201d increase when they\u2019re assigned to visit a country house to catalog antique enchanted objects. Accompanied by a giggly secretary and a hulking security officer, Amelia and Caleb try to discover why artifacts keep disappearing and what precise power lies in the ordinary-looking spoon that keeps appearing in Amelia\u2019s vicinity. As in Holton\u2019s earlier novels set in a fantastical 19th-century Britain, the book is replete with Oscar Wilde- and Alexander Pope\u2013style irony and goofball scenes with comic characters in a faux-gothic setting. This is also a satire of university culture, highlighting the emotional and professional labor forced on women in academia who are mocked for being both too competent to be likable and too feminine for true intellectual work. The dual points of view, Caleb\u2019s consistent support for Amelia, and a secret society of exasperated older women all help counter some of the bitterness of that inequality. The couple\u2019s abiding love and their fake fighting complicates the usual enemies-to-lovers narrative and might appeal to fans of Rachel Reid\u2019s Heated Rivalry. There\u2019s no explicit sex, but some passages are steamy enough to show that even professional thinkers do more than lecture.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Professors Amelia Tarrant and Caleb Sterling have been soulmates since they met as children at boarding school\u2014he an orphan, she the neglected child of indifferent academics. They grew up together and became historians together. But double standards plague even the zany magical universe they inhabit and a stray moment of platonic touching sets tongues wagging. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}