The most charming series I've read in a while

Over the last few months, I started seeing the same book pop up in my feed. Not in an annoying way, but enough to catch my attention. For whatever reason, I kept scrolling.

Then, last week something clicked. A few readers close to me mentioned this series and so on Sunday, as I was looking for something new to read, I downloaded the audiobook and decided to see what it was all about.

Fifteen minutes in, I was completely hooked. It feels something like this:

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion begins with Emma arriving at Lapis Lazuli House, her family’s London townhouse in the late 1800s. Both her parents are gone, and after years spent caring for an older cousin, she’s finally come to claim what will legally be hers when she turns twenty-one in a few months’ time.

What she actually inherits is a little less romantic: a house that’s been drained of money, a meek but friendly maid, a lazy valet, and her cousin Archibald, who has been managing the house (poorly and spitefully) in her absence.

The story unfolds through Emma’s journals, which makes everything feel personal and a little conspiratorial, as if Emma is sitting there talking directly to you. There’s no money left. Archibald has seen to that. So Emma quickly gets to work figuring out how to generate an income for the household. Lapis Lazuli Minor, a 10-foot-wide apartment carved out of a portion of the townhouse, sits empty. So she decides to rent it out. And just like that, her life begins to expand.

It’s hard to describe these books without sounding overenthusiastic (a quick scroll through Instagram or Reddit quickly reveals the fandom), but they are…wonderful. Completely charming, without trying too hard to be.

What makes them work is Emma herself. She’s observant, funny, and plucky (aren’t we always looking for main characters with more gumption?). Think Jo March from Little Women meets Sybil from The Correspondent. There is an immense pleasure to be had from spending time with a character who is intelligent, wry, and feels wholly real.

The setting is charming as well. Emma takes long walks around the parks in her neighborhood, attends occasional, often dull teas, and meets many suitors who both charm and frustrate her. She has been relegated to the rooms on the fifth-floor garret of the house, but she quickly turns these rooms overlooking the garden into her own small world of writing and thinking.

The last time I felt this quickly pulled into a world was with the Walsh Family series by Marian Keyes a few summers ago, or when I sank into a few Maeve Binchy novels last winter. Books that are warm, comforting, funny, and highly readable.

And the audiobooks are a pure delight. I listened to the first one nearly straight through on Sunday as I puttered around the house. Yesterday, my intended 30-minute walk turned into a one-hour walk because I wasn’t ready to stop.

The books are a little hard to track down right now as they gain popularity. But Libro.FM has volumes 1-5 on sale for an incredible price for Independent Bookstore Day (and so many other great titles!).

I finished volume 2 last night, and I’m trying to pace myself. A little.

I’d love to know — have you read these? What did you think?

Leave a comment

Until next time,