As an English student in college, Jess Everlee studied the Victorian era, so it’s no surprise she chose the era for her queer romance series “The Lucky Lovers of London.” What is surprising is that Everlee ended up in the romance genre.
“I admit, when I was getting my English degree and all that, I was certainly one of those people who would be like, ‘I would never be caught dead reading a romance novel,’’ Everlee said.
She became a fan of the genre after picking up books by Tiffany Reisz and Cat Sebastian. “It was so funny, and the characters were so compelling,” Everlee said of Reisz’s book, “The Siren. “That was one where I was like, ‘Wow, there’s some real stuff in this genre.’”
In December 2022, Everlee’s debut book, “The Gentleman’s Book of Vices,” was published, followed by “A Rulebook for Restless Rogues” in August 2023. The third book in the series, “A Bluestocking’s Guide to Decadence,” comes out tomorrow. (Although characters from each book show up throughout the series, they can be read as standalone titles.)
Tomorrow, Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre will host a release party for “Bluestocking’s” at 7 p.m. Everlee will be in conversation with fellow historical romance writer Felicia Grossman.
Set in London in 1885, “A Bluestocking’s Guide to Decadence” follows the love story of Jo Smith, a bookshop owner with an eclectic group of friends and a knack for going against societal expectations, and Emily Clarke, a prim country doctor with a penchant for rules and respectability.
It’s a cozy romance, but it doesn’t shy away from digging into some of the social issues of the Victorian Era, from the popularity of pornography and erotica publishing to the shifting views of women to the criminalization of homosexuality.
Signal Akron Culture & Arts Reporter Brittany Moseley spoke to Everlee about her new book, Victorian history and navigating the romance sphere.
Can you talk a bit about the time period the book is set in?
I opted to set the first book in 1883 because the stakes earlier in the century for gay couples–and I mean, particularly male-male couples, because there were different laws in place for men and women in these types of relationships in Victorian England–people were not being put to death. And I didn’t want those types of stakes; that was too high a stake. And then a few years later, there actually were some even harsher laws put in place again. And so it was kind of in this middle ground in terms of the risk that my characters would be taking as middle-class men in that first book. If they play their cards right, it’s frankly actually fairly unlikely to see a whole lot of trouble during that time.
For women, were the stakes higher?
The stakes were substantially lower until later in the 1900s. So during this series, and in Bluestocking’s, there’s nothing illegal about anything that they’re doing. So there aren’t any laws on the books that stop women from having relationships, stop them from having sex [with other women]. It’s not coming from a great place. The idea is like, women don’t do that if there’s not a man, like this doesn’t even count. We don’t even really think this is a possibility. And so it’s not in the public consciousness, whereas for the men, there’s actually a bit of a moral panic going on in society at this time.
Did you consider creating an alternate timeline where gay couples were accepted during that time period? I’m thinking of how ‘Bridgerton’ plays with race, for example.
I didn’t personally. I know that some people do, and they do it to really interesting and good effect. That wasn’t as interesting, I guess, to me. I identify as queer, as bisexual, and my friends growing up, a lot of them were queer as well. I don’t know that we always had really great experiences in that. And while it’s healing, I know, for some people to reimagine that in a different way, for me, I feel better when I can kind of dig in a little bit and have the characters become resilient and find ways to to move through [life] that works for them.
Are any of the characters based on real people in Victorian history?
There’s only one character who’s mildly based off of any historical characters, and that is Jo’s husband, Paul Smithy, who is an erotica publisher. He has some similarities with Leonard Smithers, who was an erotica publisher in the late Victorian era, who actually published a lot of Oscar Wilde’s later work after no one would touch his stuff anymore. He was just sort of a vibrant and colorful character, as you would expect, but he was also pretty sleazy. I took that aspect out and re-envisioned a different thing for him.
The romance sphere is massively popular, thanks especially to TikTok and Instagram. What’s it been like navigating that?
I think it’s exciting. I think it’s very cool. I think the fact that it has had this boom is why I was even able to publish a book like this. No agent wanted this project. They were like, ‘I can’t sell this. It’s too niche.’ When I went straight to the editor, [they were] like, ‘This is exactly what we’re looking for.’ It was so about to be the thing that the agents didn’t even know yet that this was what the editors were looking for. And so that has been really cool. I just felt so much more like a real author than I expected to, because I thought I was just going to be self-publishing this thing and seeing how it would go, but instead, I get to do some interviews and I get to have my book in Barnes & Noble, and it’s just really cool that there’s so much energy around this genre.