Upstairs Downstairs Baby

Cat Schield is my one of my favorite Harlequin romance writers and I recently had the opportunity to meet her. When I told her that I am a fan of her work when I attended the Royal Readers event at the Mall of America last weekend and that I like writing reviews she gave me her entire Sweet Tea and Scandal series in exchange for reviews! (This has been a very good year for me for meeting a lot of my favorite writers!) Upstairs Downstairs Baby is the first book in this Harlequin Desire series.

This is the story of a housekeeper, Claire, and her employer, Linc falling in love.  Quite honestly if I was not a fan of Cat Schield’s work already I may have avoided this plot line.  I am sensitive about this sort of dynamic in our post #MeToo era. However I felt like the approach to this was handled quite well. It was Claire, the maid, who made the first sexual advance with her employer Linc and it was evident that both parties really wanted the encounter to happen. Later Claire’s concerns about not fitting into Linc’s world of privilege and of being perceived of as a cliché or an opportunist brought character awareness of the dynamics that could otherwise be judged as problematic. How they worked this out with each other brought the perfect combination of being sweet and sexy for my taste.

I haven’t found myself escaping into a Harlequin Desire book in a while and this book reminded me why Harlequin romance novels can be so addicting. It was pure escapist fun! When I reflected on the critical questions I had about the problems that could arise from a work based romance, I stood reminded of the value of being able to just set the critical questions aside and ask “what if…” and transport myself into a reality that I know would never happen. I also have a huge ode to how short Harlequin novels are…I can easily read them in one sitting. And even though I am finding more and more of my sense of a literary home in horror these days, it is nice to read a book that has a guaranteed happily ever after once in a while! Upstairs Downstairs Baby fit this bill quite nicely! I am giving this 5/5 stars because it exceeded all the criteria for what I look for in a series romance novel.

I am also posting an adapted version of this review on Amazon and Goodreads.