The only bad thing about The Lady's Companion / Manual para Senoritas on Netflix is the ending

 

SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW

Let me begin this review of new Netflix romance series The Lady's Companion / Manual para Senoritas by saying that it ends on a cliffhanger.  A major, major cliffhanger for our main character, Elena.  A cliffhanger that is completely uncalled for and utterly annoying.  It may be that this ending signals that much like the ending of the first season of Game of Thrones, which turned upside down the expectations of the viewers about what kind of show we were watching, the ending of Season One of The Lady's Companion signals that this show is not a romance at all, but an interrogation of the dangers that await the genteel working class if they take any misstep -- but I don't think so.  The show is a romance, damn it.  

The series is set in Spain.  I would have said it was in the early 1800's, like Bridgerton and other Regency romances in England, but the men all wear long pants instead of breeches, and Moby Dick has already come out (this is a plot point), so it must be the late 1800's.  I assume the series is in Madrid but I'm not sure.  (I watched it in Spanish, with English subtitles.  Spanish is a fast language and I did not always have time to read the entire subtitles, so I may have missed some details.)

Our main character is Elena, who works for the posh Mencia family as, per the title, a lady's companion.  The primary duty for companions is to get their charges settled in good marriages.  The Mencia family has three daughters, two of whom are of marriageable age. The main plot of the show is Elena's efforts to find a husband for the oldest, Cristina, who has been dumped by her boyfriend and is now secretly pregnant.  Elena's efforts are complicated by her own feelings about one of the potential suitors (a Bridgerton boy lookalike) and by her own past which I never quite understood.  The gist seems to be that she herself comes from a posh family, got pregnant, was kicked out by her parents, and lost her baby.  There's an ex-boyfriend who makes an appearance, who I think was the father.  

Subplots abound.  There are other lady's companions, each with their own professional and romantic complications, and Cristina's sisters both have their own issues.  It may be that this show is trying to set up a resolution of one major romance per season, a la Bridgerton, but why, oh why, was Elena's romance not resolved this season?  Cristina gets a happy ending, and that's nice, but the show is not about her and frankly she's not particularly interesting.  Her pregnancy dilemma is a plot catalyst for Elena, the main character.  

I really enjoyed this show while I was watching it.  The costumes are fantastic, the real estate is gorgeous, and most of the plot is interesting.  But had I known the ending, I might have waited for Season 2 to come out before watching it. 

In Gilded Age romance The Lady Gets Lucky by Joanna Shupe the reader is not lucky

 

The Lady Gets Lucky by Joanna Shupe is essentially a completely standard Regency romance transposed to Gilded Age New York. 

I've said that one of the things I really like about Regency romances is that I neither know nor care about what life was actually like in Regency England.  As a 21st century American, stories set at balls attended by England's upper class in the early 1800's is as much a fantasy world as Game of Thrones.  

The Gilded Age in the United States is a bit different.  It was not overly taught in my American history classes -- robber barons, blah blah blah.  But I can place it. Reconstruction had ended in the South and things had gotten really bad again for black people, many of whom had been born into slavery.  Immigration was on the rise, as were anti-immigrant hate, sweatshops, and bloody union battles.  The country was having various colonialist adventures.  The babies born during this time had a good chance of dying in World War I or in the influenza epidemic of 1918.  

I don't know what it was like to be a rich New Yorker during the Gilded Age.  I suspect it was not as Shupe portrays in her book.  She discusses New York having a "season" much like Regency romance London a century before, with rich Bostonians descending on New York.  This seems unlikely, given the reputation the Boston Brahmins (rich people) had for thinking they were the hub of the universe.  Shupe also describes a class consciousness parallel to the England of Regency romances, which also seems unlikely given the mythology we Americans like to tell ourselves about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and the possibility of upward social mobility, and that so much of the money in the United States was new money.

But I digress.  The plot of The Lady Gets Lucky goes like this:  Heroine Alice wants to learn how to flirt so she can get married and escape her overbearing mother.  Hero Kit has a lot of experience in romance.  He wants to start a supper club but needs recipes.  It just so happens that the best cook in the best restaurant in the city used to be the personal chef for Alice's family.  And, also, Alice's secret passion is cooking.  And, also, even though she has never done more than dabble in the famous chef's  kitchen, she magically knows how to menu plan, prepare, and cook for a crowd of 80 for Kit's opening night.  (For my reviews of other romances featuring not-quite-realistic chefs, see here, here, and here.  For a wonderful young adult novel that realistically discusses the work that goes into being a professional chef, see With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo.)     

In short, other than a new (and dubious) setting, this book offers little that is original to the historical romance genre.  Unless you're really bored I recommend skipping it.  

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.