Minera Spencer's new romance novel, Notorius, does not seem to add anything new to an already saturated genre. A problem I often find with these types of historical fiction novels is how the characters' mentalities tend to be asynchronous to the time period. It's a quandary because how does one make a character sympathetic (or a vessel) to the reader if they don't share the same modern sensibilities about sex, race, science, politics, et cetera?