A Perfect Equation

Sometimes a book is incredibly timely. Just as Roe vs. Wade was being outrageously overturned, I was reading A Perfect Equation, the second book in the Secret Scientists of London series by Elizabeth Everett. As women’s reproductive rights were being sent back decades, if not centuries, I was reading about men protesting in the streets. What were they protesting about? How women were meant to be in the home taking care of their men and children. And doing nothing else. Does this sound like a mindset this country is falling back to? It certainly does to me. Interestingly, this book is set in the year 1843. So, in essence, we are moving back to the mentality of a time when a car would not be seen for the first time until decades later. Is that a time we really want to go back to?

A Perfect Equation
Secret Scientists of London Book 2
Elizabeth Everett

Letty faces a double standard

Letitia “Letty” Fenley has been disgraced. She had sex with a man without being married. Now she has been banished from society. Never mind the fact her partner, Nevin Hughes, was also part of the sexual act. Only Letty is punished. Also ignore that Nevin told Letty he loved her and promised marriage. None of that matters. Because in these situations, the woman is always to blame. Especially when the father who catches them is as powerful as Earl Melton. Melton is able to spread all around that Letty was trying to trap his son. A statement which creates a lot of irony in this book, when you think about it. Only men were supposed to be smart enough to work in science and math. Yet, women like Letty were able to “trap” these men. If the men were so much smarter, would they not have been able to see through these feminine acts? Something to think about.

Anyway, one of the people instrumental in the disgrace of Letty to society is Lord “Grey” Greycliff. He is the godson of Melton and fully believes what Melton told him about Letty. When Grey catches Letty trying to see Nevin again, he tells her how despicable of a human being she is. These are words Letty keeps with her.

Time moves on for Letty and Grey

Now, six years later, Letty and Grey are forced to work together. Or at least it is supposed to be together. Grey believes he is the one truly in charge, and everyone is supposed to do everything he says because he said it. Forget that Letty was actually the one left in charge. Grey still believes everyone should do his bidding.

What Letty has been left in charge of is Athena’s Retreat. It is a secret club where women can study math and science. It is usually run by Violet Kneland, Grey’s former step-mother. Violet is going to the country for a while (the club is in London) to teach and recover from her miscarriage. Her husband, Arthur, the usual security of Athena’s Retreat, is going with her. Violet needs Letty to run the club and Grey to act as security. Grey takes this to mean everyone will do as he says.

Clearly Grey does not know the women of this club very well. They constantly outsmart him and bring up how much they love Arthur. This gets on Grey’s nerves. To make matters worse, Letty keeps telling Grey how horrible of a human being he is, while he struggles with his previous perceptions of her.

Tied Up in Knots
Kate Dorsey

Grey realizes the truth

Eventually Grey realizes Melton lied to him. Letty is not at all who Melton said she was. Grey also finds himself falling in love with Letty. This is not a good thing. A childhood affliction, which caused him to experience seizures, has made Grey feel he must be in control at all times. Love means letting go of control. So, for Grey, love is not an option.

Letty also falls in love with Grey, but she understands her past and his social standing prevent them from being together. Besides, she is better off without anyone in her life romantically. It frees her to concentrate on her math, which she loves very much.

Another problem Grey must face is Melton keeps pushing him to close Athena’s Retreat. The club is attached to Grey's family home, which gives him technically the right to shut it down. Melton wants Grey to do this to give Grey a better chance at becoming president of an organization called the Department. What this group specifically does, I don’t know. To me it sounds like a bad version of the Avengers. A group of rich white men who confront and attack the struggling people below them in society, stopping the people from being heard, all in the name of queen and country, but really only for their own power. Melton is leaving his leadership position in this group and believes Grey will be a shoo-in for his replacement. The problem is Victor Armitage.

Victor Armitage: the villain of the story. But is he the only one?

Victor Armitage is one of the biggest and loudest people telling women their place is in the home, breeding. His wife agrees with him, as do other high society women, which is disgusting.

Armitage infiltrates the Department by finding dirt on some of its members. Despite not being a member himself, he is trying to take over the group. To stop this, Melton tells Grey he must shut down Athena’s Retreat. It will tell the other members he believes in traditional values (aka anti-women) and is the person for the leadership role.

And Grey goes along with this! Under the guise of closing the club for the women’s protection, Grey sets out to gain his position of power.

What Grey does not expect is the women refuse to be shut down. They keep saying there will be a vote on the matter, completely running over anything Grey has to say. These women are not going to let a man tell them what to do, no matter how much right he feels he has in doing so.

In case you can’t tell, I don’t like Grey. I think he’s a jerk—and a few other choice names. In many ways he’s exactly the same as Victor Armitage. He feels he has every right to take women’s freedoms away for his own power. The difference is, Grey actually convinces himself his closing Athena’s Retreat—the only place the women are free to study their interests—is for their safety. He believes he knows what is best for these women, far more than they do, and it is up to him to show them the error of their ways. Does this sound familiar?

The thing is, by Grey taking this road, he is proving himself worse than Armitage. Victor Armitage doesn’t even bother hiding the fact that what he does is in order to gain power. Grey tries to claim that power is not his motivation, when it actually is, making Grey’s behavior worse.

An important book to read

Okay, so if I dislike Grey this much, why am I writing about A Perfect Equation? Because it’s a good book! It is also a book with an important message: be true to yourself, and do not let anyone take your rights and freedoms away simply because they can.

To top it off, I like Letty. After her incident with Nevin, she was able to find herself and is not willing to back down on who she is. Whether it is with her math or her love of romance novels, Letty will not let anyone take those things away from her, even if she does have to pose as a man to accomplish what she wants to. Letty has also gotten really good at telling people off.

Another character I like is Letty’s brother, Sam. He is really funny as he desperately tries to keep his sister under control. A sweet, kind man, I hope there is a book for Sam in the future.

A look into the future

In the back of A Perfect Equation, there is an excerpt for the next book in the series. Or at least there is in the version I read. It looks like the pairing will be Earl Grantham, a friend of Violet’s, and Madame Margaret Gault, a new member of Athena’s Retreat. There is a history between these two, but what that history fully is, I do not know. That has yet to be revealed.

The next book, currently titled A Love by Design, is scheduled for release in 2023. I really hope by then this country will have righted itself. That these discriminations and lack of rights the women in this series face will once again be in the past and only exist in works of historical fiction and history books. They will once again be just history. Because as of now, the lack of rights is all too much in the present.