Lynn Messina (1)

Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: Flora Hyde-Clare’s visit to her beau’s ancestral home was always going to be a disaster. Her mother’s nervous habit of rambling nonsensically, her father’s thinly veiled contempt, her own desperate desire to make a good impression on Sebastian Holcroft’s parents, and his seemingly endless parade of siblings all guaranteed that their stay in the country would be intolerably awkward at best.

Yet for all her dire misgivings, Flora never imagined show more one of the household servants would wind up slain in his own bed.

But that is precisely what happens to the handsome young land steward. Chock-full of bright ideas for the estate’s future, Adrian Singleton nevertheless failed to conceive the folly of dallying with an impoverished widow whom he had no intention of marrying. Tired of his lies, his lover strangles him to death with her scarf—her very stylish scarf.

That is the story everyone believes—except Flora, who simply cannot fathom how a poor woman buried in the country would get her hands on a scarf in the first stare of fashion. The lovely accessory has to belong to a lady of means, and although she knows investigating Holcroft’s sisters for murder is a surefire way to end their relationship, she simply cannot smother her suspicions. She has to poke around until she finds out which one is the culprit.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Flora (cousin of the Duchess of Kesgrave from Author Messina's related series) returns to delight us with her shrewd, witty observations...this time she's really in the muck with Sebastian, her beloved, throwing her to the piggy, pursey-mouthed swine he's related to. It's a wise move on his part, since she can never claim that she was blindsided by how perfectly ghastly and terrible his (large!) family is...snobbish, unkind, small-minded, ungrateful people, so one wonders where the heck he came from. He doesn't tell her this, leaving her to think he wants his family to approve of her...and that leads her to make more efforts to be kind than I thought she should have made! Sebastian's truly terrible father, and one of his sisters, think quite poorly of Flora despite her being cousin of a duchess...because they imagine her to be a spy. (To be fair, there's a reason for that...her behavior's odd.)

What makes the read fun is the way Author Messina lets us in on Flora's thoughts, those sensible and focused as well as those anxious and silly. I think her fondness for Sebastian is drawn with enough detail to convince all but the most cynical that she's genuinely his friend, and he hers. It's a lovely read, and the murder...despite the fact I do not enjoy murder victims being characters who really just need killin'...is handled with the aplomb of an experienced craft worker in the field.

Good fun to be had if you need some cozy escape time from modern reality. show less

Her Outageousness prevails!

Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, “Her Outrageousness” is in a pickle. She’s dreading going to Haverill Hall with its hundreds of rooms and servants to match, the “massive Matlock ancestral estate.” Beatrice is pregnant. The thought of removing to the Hall maybe by September is weighs down on her. Now she learns Lady Abercrombie has autocratically, without permission, issued invitations to a house party at the Hall. Something Bea had said she didn’t want show more and something the atrociously managing Lady Abercombie had no right to do!
Bea’s secretly apprehensive about how the servants at the estate will react to her.
All that fades though when the Crime Lord, “Hell and Fury” Hawes pays a visit to inform Beatrice and Kesgrave that he’s just come from the Duke’s cousin’s place and has found Mortimer dead, murdered. Hawe’s is calling in his marker. He wants Bea and the Duke to investigate.
Their investigations uncover a lively trade in fraudulent ancient artefacts, including forged Assyrian reliefs, and so much more.
The unveiling of the murderer is dangerous. Bea is not moved.
Throughout this investigation it seems Bea has come to terms with the strong person she now is.
Another fascinating tale from Messina about one of my fav. intrepid regency sleuths.

A Book Whisperer ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher. show less

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Nothing ruins a lovely house party like bloody murder.

At the decrepit old age of six-and-twenty, Miss Beatrice Hyde-Clare has virtually no hope of landing a husband. An orphan living off her relatives' charity, her job is to sit with her needlework and to keep her thoughts to herself.

When Bea receives an invitation to an elegant country party, she intends to do just that. Not even the presence of the aggravatingly handsome Duke of Kesgrave could lead show more this young lady to scandal. True, she might wish to pour her bowl of turtle soup on his aristocratic head—however, she would never actually do it. But a lady can fantasize.
But, when she stumbles upon the dead body of another houseguest, all Bea's good intentions fly out the well-appointed window. Although the magistrate declares it a suicide, she knows better.

Time for some very unladylike behavior.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: OLD?! TWENTY-SIX WAS OLD?! I reject this notion whole and entire! I don't reject the series, however, as Beatrice is another anachronistic Regency heroine who does not "know her place" which will always get my attention, as someone who has never known his place either.

I don't rate it more highly because it has other anachronistic touches I found less amusing, eg "The difference between who she perceived herself to be and who she actually was was vast, and if she had any fight left in her, she would resent how easily she’d succumbed to everyone’s low expectations, including her own," very much a twenty-first century kind of a thought. Still well worth your time and treasure if you need a pleasant diversion. show less

Verity Lark, misunderstood and misconstrued!

Ah Verity! A whirlwind of disguises, a master of the impossible, of quick thinking, and of supreme confidence in her own powers of deduction.
No-one really sees her except Freddie and Delphine. No-one can match her except Colson Hardwick.
We hear more of her time as a child with Freddie and Delphine, matching wits with the wicked headmistress, the Wraithe. We hear of the Dowager Duchess of Kesgrave hand in Verity’s past. Meanwhile Verity’s still show more musing about her half brother, the Duke of a Kesgrave.
Verity is enjoying matching wits with Coulson, wondering what she’d do if he offered to make her his mistress. After all she is the illegitimate daughter of the great courtesan, La Reina!
Meanwhile Coulson has a target painted on his back having been reavealed as a British spy who helped bring down Napoleon. The French immigrants in England are many. Anyone amongst them could be a threat.
How to flush them out, particularly as someone attempted to kidnap Verity out of her bedroom! More fool them! Then we find that Colson has had a number of attempts on his life. All evidence and supposition leads to the French Embassy, more so when Verity narrowly misses being hit by a plummeting body from a window there.
Suicide … or murder!
Verity has her hands full and her feelings disrupted with this investigation, Colson’s puzzling overtures, and Kesgrave’s attention. And then there’s the Dower Duchess! What a to do!
I had my hands full, gasping out loud, sudden fits of laughter, and struck by Verity’s supreme shortsightedness where Colson is concerned.

A Book Whisperer ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher. show less