SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Lady Eve's Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on June 4, 2024 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Lady Eve's Last Con is a science fiction romance novel by Rebecca Fraimow. The novel is a F/F romance inspired by a very old rom-com movie, The Lady Eve, which I have not seen and hadn't heard of prior to reading this book. But when an author I trust, Stephanie Burgis, recommended this book as a "sparkly, witty SF screwball comedy romance", well I had to give it a try. And boy was I glad I did.

For Lady Eve's Last Con is an absolute delight. The story features Ruthi, a con artist who used to work with her sister to con and perform small time jobs to make money off rich jerks, as she tries to pull off a con on the rich guy Esteban who broke her sister's heart and left her pregnant and alone. Of course what she doesn't count on, as she attempts to get Esteban to fall in love with her, is Esteban's smooth-talking always-flirting sister Sol who take an immediate interest in Ruthi. The result is a rom-com that is incredibly charming, with an excellent main character and love interest, as both Ruthi and Sol find themselves caught up in the con and their own private interests...and of course their mutual attraction. It's not laugh out loud funny, but it's still always highly entertaining and it reads really well. It also doesn't hurt that the book is at times incredibly Jewish, which just makes it feel like it was written to target me particularly, although I would highly recommend this book for non-Jewish readers as well.
Plot Summary:  

Ruthi Johnson is a small time card sharp and con artist. She, along with her sister Jules, have stuck largely to interstellar cruise lines, where she's been able to con rich rubes with more money than sense such that the two of them have been able to make an okay living. Their cons have never gone beyond small time gigs generally and Ruthi is okay with that - after all Jules is the only person she has in the world and getting in too deep could be dangerous.

But when Jules falls in love with the rich introverted Esteban Mendez-Yuki and then finds herself heartbroken, pregnant, and abandoned by Esteban when she reveals her true identity, Ruthi finds the Jules she knows is lost behind Jules' depression. And when Esteban's lawyers refuse to provide Jules with any support, Ruthi decides to take matters into her own hands: by engaging in a bigger con than she ever has before. Ruthi will disguise herself as the provincial rich girl Evelyn Ojukwu and get Esteban to fall in love with HER...and then she'll take Esteban for all he's worth, punishing Esteban for hurting her sister and providing the two of them with the financial support they deserve.

But Ruthi didn't count upon interference from Esteban's half-sister, the debonair Sol, a suave woman who is the real brains and heart in the family, and who cares and wants to take care of her own. And as Ruthi and Sol's affairs get more and more tangled, Ruthi will find herself needing to reconsider what's really important to her, and whether what she's doing will actually help her sister...or will only break Ruthi's own heart.....

Lady Eve's Last Con is told from the first person perspective of Ruthi, who is a lovely and very enjoyable protagonist.  Ruthi is an orphan (her mother had roots in Brooklyn's Jewish community, but she's never met them) whose only real family is her sister Jules and for most of her life Ruthi and her sister have wandered around the stars and performed small time con jobs on rich socialites.  And Ruthi is the older sister in the relationship and thinks of herself as the one taking care of her sister...so when her sister is heartbroken, pregnant, and no longer the joyous fun conning girl she knows, well Ruth is incredibly shaken and scared (and to be honest, she was a little shaken even before that about her sister possibly leaving her to be with Esteban).  And well, despite being the so-called responsible person of the two sisters, Ruthi is more than a little bit impulsive and always has to have the last word.  So when Ruthi is confronted by a sister who is depressed and not at all the person she knows, that impulsiveness leads her to leave her sister at a time her sister probably needs support the most and to try and get revenge on her sister's behalf....without telling her sister about it for fear of what her sister might say she wants.  

It's a situation that leaves Ruthi adrift and feeling alone and constantly afraid she's made the wrong decision, and propels her to keep moving forward in trying to hook her con on Esteban.  But then Sol interferes again and again and Ruthi can't stop paying attention to Sol despite her better judgment.  Sol is rich and privileged through her mother and stepfather, but she's also caring towards her poor relatives and wants to be independent...even as she's the real brains for their family's insurance business (Esteban is too self absorbed in his science and her stepfather is dying).  Sol and Ruthi's romance is not quick, and delightfully the book does not wind up with Ruthi concealing her identity from Sol for long, but instead has the two of them circling each other with their own schemes and interests - aided by the problems caused by a mobster who has their own interests in Sol and whose attention Ruthi would love to avoid.  But the attraction between the two of them is really well done and soon enough Ruthi can't help herself but get involved in matters that threaten her own con but also threaten the mobster's interests....and thus Ruthi and Sol's own lives.  

This is all written so incredibly well as Ruthi and Sol are such wonderful characters and Ruthi's first person internal dialogue is incredibly fun and entertaining.  It's not a comedy in the sense of making you laugh out loud - it never really came close to that - but the book is really fun, always entertaining and resolves itself in a way that avoids some of the worst tropes that are sometimes overused in romance (it also avoids too many really cringe-y scenes, which I hate).  It never feels too slow or too quick, and it just made me repeatedly smile, even as it also occasionally dealt with themes of privilege, family, and the things we do to avoid facing the possibility of being alone.  

Also, and this may be important to just a small part of my audience, but this book is incredibly (Ashkenazi) Jewish and I loved that so much.  Ruthi and her sister speak Yiddish together and use Yiddish in writing, Ruthi's inner narrative has her make some Jewish references (she describes a girl as having a "face like an etrog" at one point) and the world features references to Shabbat and Kosher product that might just a little bit go over a non Jewish person's head, although they should probably be fine figuring it out.  But for me I loved it - it might not quite be a Jewish-normed universe (kosher product is referenced as being for a minority of the population as you'd expect) but it's close and it made this even more enjoyable as an Ashkenazi Jewish reader.  

In short, I pretty much loved Lady Eve's Last Con and want to beg my readers, Jewish or not, to read it.  This is an excellent F/F romance in a well done science fiction world and I hope its not the last such book from Fraimow.