Given that even the powerful witches, pirates, and spies of India Holton’s first series, Dangerous Damsels (2021-23), had to contend with often stifling social mores and an overbearing patriarchy, it should come as no surprise that the author chose to continue the exploration of these themes in her new series. The ways in which society impacts our relationship with and perspective on our own selves are potent subject matter for fiction—especially when, in this case, all three female protagonists are professors long before that was allowed in our existing reality.
The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire concludes Holton’s Love’s Academic trilogy (2024-26), set, like Dangerous Damsels , in an alternate Victorian England. Each book in the series features academics from a different discipline—ornithology, geography, and history—with, naturally, a liberal sprinkling of magic. Because where’s the fun when there’s zero risk of sudden explosions?
Professors Amelia Tarrant and Caleb Sterling are historians at Oxford University (Amelia is the sister of Professor Gabriel Tarrant from The Geographer's Map to Romance [2025], and cousin of Professor Devon Lockley from The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love [2024]). More precisely, they are magical antique experts upon whom many of their more traditional historian colleagues look down as too flamboyant. After all, these antiquarians are “forever causing drama with magical antiques instead of just quietly reading about drama” like more civilised folk.
Amelia and Caleb also happen to have been best friends and soulmates from the moment they met at boarding school, he a scholarship student and orphan and she the “too emotional” daughter of a well-to-do academic family. Their motto was (practically) “Tidy, Organised, and Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip to such a degree that stress is too scared to approach you (or, as was formally printed on their stationery, Stabilitas Perpetuus).”
The pair have already learned over the years to keep “the richness of their friendship scrupulously hidden behind a facade of ‘just chums,’” though, as Amelia admits in her heart of hearts, it would never be just—he is “almost everything” to her). But an innocent hug offered in comfort after the news of her grandfather’s passing is blown into scandalous proportions by one of the senior professors (and incorrigible gossips) of the department. They are given an ultimatum: marry or their jobs will be at stake (more hers than his, of course)—and even more pertinently, what about Amelia’s reputation?
Just because women had been admitted to tertiary education after Queen Charlotte demanded it a hundred years earlier didn’t mean they were free to act like men. Heavens, if female academics started touching their male colleagues willy-nilly (so to speak), what would come next? Trousers on ladies?!
The only option that seems feasible to them is to publicly pretend that they hate each other. It’s a lofty ask, for this is a friendship that is as deep as it is long-running, but Amelia, one of a handful of women professors at Oxford, has worked too hard to lose everything. Besides, she couldn’t bear to be separated from Caleb if she were to leave and head to, say, Europe—for his part, he tells her more than once that he’d follow her anywhere, but she doesn’t let herself believe that he’s truly serious, no matter how much he cares for her, as a friend, of course.
What’s more, Amelia, of late, has started to feel things , unknown to Caleb (who, unknown to her, has always felt them but was too afraid of losing her and their bosom friendship to act on them). Fluttery, shimmery, twinkly things that are most definitely not feelings of more than friendship for her very best friend, of course not. Whatever it is sure is getting harder to pretend away, though. She is sure that he feels nothing of that sort in return—besides, who in their right mind would jeopardise a friendship like the one they have without a confession written in triplicate?
Then there’s the small matter of a new artefact. This acquisition, a rather harmless-looking spoon, seems all too eager to help amplify Amelia’s turbulent emotional state with the help of any surrounding thaumaturgic energy, causing blithe chaos and destruction around her, and, because Caleb’s never far away where his “Meely” is concerned, him.
Blissfully unaware that said spoon is feeding off the unexpected and unexamined, let’s say, release they both feel on account of the barbs and banter they’re allowed to exchange freely—unlike aforementioned feelings that both believe unrequited and hence bottle up—the duo continue to engage in very enthusiastic displays of their public enmity.
But, after their second successive significant magical kaboom—in the Minervaeum, London’s premier club for academics, no less—their exasperated faculty head packs them off to a haunted manor in Cumbria to study, document, and catalogue Sir Nigel Harroway’s extensive antiques collection on behalf of the British Library, accompanied by the irritatingly effervescent Miss Vanity Tunicliffe and the polar opposite Sergeant Sheffield. Surely, they can’t get into any trouble there?
What follows is dark academia in vibe, but magical mayhem in execution—fitting the author’s Howl’s Moving Castle x Jane Eyre comparison perfectly (with Caleb being the most Howl to ever, well, Howl). All of this is infused with Holton’s trademark wit and imagination, a combination that elicits a wide range of reactions from amusement to chuckles to uproarious laughter. Here we find thoughtful sensitivity, overt, covert, and wonderfully winky literary references, and the unbridled joy that seems to accompany each of her creations.
In one aspect of Antiquarian, though, Holton is in uncharted territory. All characters from the first series, as well as Beth and Devon from the first book of this one, are strangers who get to know each other through the course of the story; Elodie and Gabriel from Geographer know each other a bit more but still have a lot of unearthing ahead of them. Amelia and Caleb are introduced to us when they have already been best friends for more than half of their lives (two decades, to be precise). There is boundless shared history, comfort, and care, which is one of my favourite parts about the best-friends-to-lovers trope. It does mean, however, that the author has to convince the reader of the strength of a bond that already exists, but the evolution of which they haven’t witnessed.
But there’s no need to reinvent the wheel where this is concerned, and thankfully Holton agrees. Through present-day interactions and flashbacks, and a dual POV like the author’s other books, the story and its principal players glide into place. While we may not get to know as much of their journey in the end as we want to, we are rewarded in another surprising way—we are privy to each character’s most intimately held feelings and wishes before the other is, and this makes for a very satisfying slow burn.
None of this would work if the characters weren’t cooperative. In Amelia and Caleb we have two more compelling, wholly individual characters who are also instantly recognisable as entries in the India Holton canon. The author is as tender as she is tongue-in-cheek when it comes to her characters’ innermost emotional and mental turmoil, their doubts, hopes, wishes, their desires; and the paths they traverse alone and together towards a resolution—even if it’s not, ultimately, the final destination, simply a step or a few in an ongoing journey.
Even though she writes stories about, in her words, “unconventional women and the men who love them,” Holton’s male leads are never anything less than well-rounded, crafted with fondness, and captivating in their own right. Here, we have the sunshiny and handsome Caleb, who has learned much of how to wield his considerable charm through escaping the circumstance of his birth. Despite achieving all that he has, however, he has never quite gotten over the feeling of having to prove himself, of not being enough (which includes him believing on some level that he doesn’t deserve Amelia’s romantic love). He hides behind the reputation of being the flamboyant, handsome lover who doesn’t believe in commitment, but this is so far from the truth that you couldn’t spot it even if you squinted yourself into a migraine. In fact, he is fun, sweet, caring, romantic, and so obviously smitten with Amelia—his yearning and devotion, goodness me—that it’s almost amusing watching her stumble her way through her own blinders to this realisation.
Coming back to the women. What I particularly appreciated in the Love’s Academic books is that there was solidarity between each of its three women professors. Here, Holton manages to highlight different facets of the problems plaguing academia (and society) and how there are as many ways to tackle them as there are people.
Through the course of this particular novel, Holton shows us how it’s impossible to be authentic without consequence in a world of very often mediocre men, which, where true scholarship is concerned, simultaneously mocks the academic ability of its women (too fragile, too feminine, their tiny brains might explode, the poor dears), but which derides any proven competence by claiming unlikability. Amelia is referred to, by virtue of her capability, knowledge, and the implacable, unapproachable facade as well as well-honed death stare created from necessity, as “La Erudite Terrifante” in France.
I will say that the consequences, and the sacrifices, feel heavier in this novel than in the other two books, and that’s because of Amelia’s individual personal journey, with the author showing us that each person experiences the same situation differently on account of who they are. Quiet and studious, Amelia is “always willing to help other people so long as they did not try to interrupt her reading.” She possesses a keen intellect and does not “hesitate to employ said brain without artifice or apology.” She is an expressive softy at her core but has denied herself access to that side of her for so long that she has forgotten the existence of what is an essential part of herself. (Though this doesn’t prevent her from proactively caring for and looking out for her students in a sweet revelation).
Amelia, we quickly understand, doesn’t want to be feared, only respected and loved. When the story opens, she is already beginning to suspect that something within her is broken, though she believes she wouldn’t even know where to start to fix it and is worried it might be irrevocable. By the end, she will realise the true toll of these constant contradictions on all aspects of her well-being. There is an additional burden weighing on her that she hasn’t noticed, which she slowly will—how much it hurts her to fake-hate Caleb, her most favourite person in all the world.
The plot, in many other Holton novels, is usually a simple, yet imaginatively eventful, vehicle for the various shenanigans her characters get up to. In Antiquarian, it’s even looser. There is a mystery to be solved regarding the strange magical goings-on at Ravenscroft Manor (one which resolves itself with a surprising but welcome twist), but the pacing overall is slow, until, right on cue—BOOM. In all the ways that matter.
But the core narrative thread remains that of Amelia’s journey to choosing herself and her peace of mind without conforming to societal expectations. Loving all parts of herself—the intellectual and the emotional, the strong and the seemingly weak but in fact soft and radiant—without reservation. When she finally set down the weight of everything that was giving her an actual and metaphorical headache and said a firm no thank you, I silently cheered.
Ultimately, it feels fitting that she and Caleb—who have, during the course of their stay at the manor, been routinely inching closer and closer before springing apart when (often rudely) interrupted—consummate their love only after Amelia stands up for herself and for the man she adores. “My soul is friends with yours,” she says. “I want no more limits on expressing that.”