Discussion Questions:

1. Georgiana has been an important side character throughout the Belvoir’s Library series, and she finally gets her own book in Ladies in Hating! If you’ve read the previous books, were you surprised by anything we learn about Georgiana in Ladies in Hating? If not, do you want to go back and read Georgiana’s big Gothic reveal in Ne’er Duke Well?

2. Cat and Georgiana are both novelists. Do you enjoy books about book people? How do you think authorship provided a particular kind of power and agency for nineteenth-century women?

3. Despite her friendships with the main characters in Ne’er Duke Well and Earl Crush, Georgiana still feels lonely. Why do you think that is?

4. Ladies in Hating is a rivals-to-lovers romance, with lots of enmity and banter in the beginning. Do you enjoy this type of romance? Did you find Cat and Georgiana’s transition from rivals to lovers believable?

5. How do their very different backgrounds affect Cat and Georgiana? What advantages do each of them possess in terms of their histories?

6. Renwick House becomes a character of its own in Ladies in Hating. What is it about Renwick House that makes Cat and Georgiana fall in love with it?

7. In some ways, this is a story of family almost as much as it is a romance. Did you enjoy reading Georgiana’s reunion with her brothers? How were Cat and Georgiana’s relationships with their families crucial to their overall arcs?

8. How familiar are you with the history of queer people in the nineteenth century? Were you surprised to hear about the real sapphic books that Cat and Georgiana could have read in the 1800s? The author’s note mentions several sapphic couples in the Regency era—had you heard of any of them before?

9. Ladies in Hating includes numerous examples of queer celebrities (e.g. Lady Warwick and Lady Strachan) and queer family histories (e.g. Cat’s father). Cat and Georgiana also discuss sapphic love stories in novels they read as adolescents. Why is this representation so important to Cat and Georgiana? Why is it important today?

10. Ladies in Hating incorporates and has fun with many classic Gothic tropes, e.g. a haunted manor, a ghost, a secret identity, and a surprise inheritance. Have you read any Gothic novels in the past? Did you enjoy the spooky or supernatural elements in this book?

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Further Reading & Fun Links:

1. View the 1820 print of Lady Strachan & Lady Warwick kissing in the park. (SFW - they're just "two dear friends"!)

2. Read the 1683 English translation of Vénus dans le Cloître (aka the sexy nuns book)