There is a particular thrill in opening a Regency romance and finding that the heroine’s great ambition is not a husband or a country estate, but a complete catalogue of the rudest words in the English language. That conceit sits at the centre of The Very Definition of Love by Sophia Benoit, and it is the sort of idea that either wins you over in the first chapter or loses you outright. For most readers, it will win. Harriet Bancroft wants words, the filthy ones especially, the ones men have hoarded and kept from women for centuries. A romance that runs on language rather than lineage feels fresh, even in a corner of fiction that reinvents itself every publishing season.
A premise built on language, not lineage
Most of the plot is already printed on the cover, so I can say this much without giving anything away. Harriet, the overlooked eldest daughter of a gambling-ruined earl, is caught alone in a library with London’s most infamous rake, Lord Alexander Stirling. To protect her reputation and her younger sisters’ prospects, she more or less strong-arms him to Gretna Green and proposes a marriage in name only. He keeps his women, she keeps her work, and nobody falls in love. You can guess how well that plan holds.
What makes the setup of The Very Definition of Love by Sophia Benoit sing is the bargain underneath it. Alexander happens to know every indecent word Harriet is desperate to define, and she is not too proud to ask. The “he teaches her” trope, which can turn patronising in weaker hands, becomes a running negotiation between two clever people. Benoit understands that the warmest thing on the page is often a question and a hesitation rather than the act itself.
Harriet and Alexander, two people worth the wait
Harriet is the rare romance heroine who is genuinely strange rather than cutely quirky. She scratches vocabulary onto her own wrist in old ink. She would happily read about Welsh agriculture instead of dancing. Her bluestocking streak is not a costume she sheds in the third act; it is the whole of her, and the book never asks her to apologise for it.
Alexander is a softer creation. He arrives as a hardened libertine and reforms almost at once, which suits the warmth of the story but quietly drains away the danger the early chapters promise. By the midpoint his rakishness is something we are told about more than shown.
The wit, and the education
The banter is the engine, and it mostly purrs. Benoit writes columns and hosts a podcast about sex and relationships in her other life, and that ear for a punchline carries straight into the prose. The narrator occasionally turns to wink at the reader, a trick that could grate but mostly lands. There is real intelligence in how the book treats women’s pleasure as a subject worth studying, almost academically, without ever losing the heat.
What the book gets right
The book’s real strengths are easy to name:
- A heroine whose ambition is intellectual, not romantic, and stays that way to the end.
- Dialogue that is funny on its own terms, not merely functional.
- A sex-positive frame that treats female desire as curiosity rather than shame.
- A closing glossary and author’s note that turn the back matter into a small pleasure of its own.
That final point deserves a moment. Benoit clearly did her homework, leaning on Francis Grose’s 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue and tipping her hat to Georgette Heyer, the writer who more or less built Regency romance a century ago. The chapter-by-chapter glossary of period slang is the kind of generous touch that marks an author who loves her subject, and it gives The Very Definition of Love by Sophia Benoit a scholarly wink that suits the heroine perfectly.
Where it loses a step
No romance this fun is without a few frustrations, and this one has them.
The inciting incident leans hard on contrivance. The “slight kidnapping” of a grown man by a wallflower asks for a fair amount of goodwill, even by the elastic standards of the genre. Once the marriage is settled, the central misunderstanding that keeps the couple apart is a familiar device, and some readers will wish the two would simply say the thing they are both so obviously feeling. The yearning is lovely. The obstacle generating it is thinner than the emotion it produces.
On the modern voice
Benoit writes a Regency that sounds, by design, like now. The marketing comparisons to Emily Henry and to a corseted Carrie Bradshaw are earned. That choice gives the book its snap, but it costs something too. Readers who want the deep period texture of a Sarah MacLean or an Evie Dunmore may find the history sits lightly on the surface, more set dressing than atmosphere. It is a stylistic decision rather than a flaw, but worth knowing before you start.
One last small gripe
A couple of secondary threads, including Harriet’s long-running correspondence with a faraway scholar, feel more functional than fully grown. They do their job for the plot and then politely step aside.
Who should read it, and the author behind it
This is Sophia Benoit’s fiction debut, following her essay collection Well, This Is Exhausting and years of columns for GQ and Bustle. The Very Definition of Love by Sophia Benoit is also billed as the first Bancroft Sisters novel, which means Harriet’s sharp-tongued sister Philippa and the younger girls are plainly being set up for books of their own. Readers who came to historical romance through the recent contemporary boom, and who like their corsets with a smirk, are the obvious audience.
If you liked it, try these next
For your next read in a similar key, consider:
- Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore, for the brainy, principled heroine.
- The Governess Game by Tessa Dare, for the same mix of heat and comedy.
- A Lady’s Guide to Scandal by Sophie Irwin, for a witty, modern-feeling Regency.
- The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite, for an intellectual heroine and a tender slow burn.
- Anything by Sarah MacLean, whom Benoit thanks by name, for the gold standard of the form.
The final word
The Very Definition of Love by Sophia Benoit is a clever, warm, and frequently very funny debut that knows exactly what it wants to be. It is not flawless. The plotting creaks in spots and the history wears thin. But it offers something rarer than polish, which is a genuine point of view about words, women, and want. Harriet would tell you that the right word, found at the right moment, can change everything. Benoit has written a whole romance to prove her right, and for anyone who has ever loved a book for its language as much as its love story, The Very Definition of Love is an easy one to press into a friend’s hands.