It's the story of two middle-aged women in 1820 who find friendship and then love together. It was a slow-moving, but ultimately quite saucy romance and I really ended up rooting for the two MCs. In addition, the story dealt with the lot of women in society in the 1800s (which in case you didn't know, was shit), although not to the extent that the first book in the series did. I really liked that one of the side characters refused to get married so as not to be under the control of a dude.
The characterisation was very well done and there was plenty of detail about both characters before their friendship started so you could see how good they'd be for each other. The plot was a bit weavey and didn't have a huge amount of structure, but it still kept me reading.
There are a couple of crossover points with characters from the first book, but this could easily have been a standalone novel, you don't have to have read the first book to enjoy this one.
The only bad thing about this book was the front cover. Take a look at it. It does not by any stretch of the imagination depict two middle-aged women living in the English countryside in 1820. It just doesn't. The fashions in 1820 were still in the Regency style, especially for not-upper-class women. The yellow dress has an empire waistline, just about, but the sleeves are all wrong and the hairstyle the yellow-dress-woman has is all wrong. The other woman is wearing a trouser suit like she's about to go to work in a bank circa 2002. And quite apart from the anachronistic clothes, both of the women in the book wear men's clothes a lot of the time. If I was judging this book by the cover (as I often do) there's no way I would have picked it up.
4.5 stars