eyes.2c Reviews

Sense and Suitability  by Pepper Basham           ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Only Emmeline Lockhart, Gentleman’s daughter with no dowry to speak of, could turn heartache into something else. When she waited in the garden for Simon Reeves to propose, nephew to the Viscount of Ravenscross, little did she know that he’d left her after penning a short note. Emme is devastated and retreats to her home in St Groves to heal and write. Would that the healing would happen! The writing certainly is. Stranger things do happen, especially whilst she’s visiting a distraught widow on behalf of her cousin Thomas, the local vicar. Emme certainly didn’t expect to meet Simon, now Viscount Ravenscross, after she’d chased a young child on a rather fast horse. A girl she’d spied dragging a sack onto the back of her horse replete with the widow’s stolen chickens. Nor did she expect to be precipitously thrown over her own horse’s head into a pond only  to be rescued by said Viscount. Simon ...

The Hidden City  (Charles Lenox Mystery #15) by Charles Finch           ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Private Investigator Charles Lenox’s business is successful. Charles has had a message from his former Housekeeper, Elizabeth Huggins, from his early days of detecting. She’s back in London living in a house where a murder took place. Strange disturbances are occurring. Charles responds quickly and finds himself following a thread that runs throughout London to places where other deaths have happened and he and his partner Graham find small, imperceptible carvings marked on these buildings. On the home front, out of the blue, he receives a message that his brother Jasper has died in India and his daughter is coming to London. Imagine his surprise when not one, but two young ladies turn up. Lord Edmund, Charles’ widowed older brother, has thrown himself into politics and has taken up a seat in parliament. He’s seen as the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lady Jane, Charles...

A Lady Most Wayward  (Queen’s Deadly Damsels #5) by Darcy McGuire          ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Just when the Duchess of Dorset, Lady Philippa Winterbourne, thought she was on the trail of the Crow, someone stopped her in her tracks. That someone was Lady Olivia Smithwyke, Marchioness Brightmore. Lady Philippa is the leader of the Queen’s Deadly Damsels committed to searching out the identity of the leader of the Devil’s Sons and destroying him. The Devil’s Sons are a network of the powerful and the degenerate, mainly noblemen, who steal girls and young women, use and abuse them, and then secretes them overseas to places like brothels. Olivia has been playing a fraught hand, never more so than when her daughter is taken by the Devil’s Sons. She needs the help of the Deadly Damsels. Taut with friction and undeniable attraction between the two main characters this is a Victorian sapphic thriller that encompasses danger, secrets and love! A Boldwood ARC via NetGalley. ...

These Violet Delights : A Novel by Madeleine Roux      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Violet Arden has always seen things differently. Her heart and mind follow the siren’s call of creativity. Unfortunately her aspirations as an artist hit rock bottom when she’s publicly confronted at an exhibition in Mayfair by the fiancée of three years of her French mentor, Renaud Moncelle. The same Renaud who’d spun lures about marrying her. Not only that, Violet overhears a derogatory comment by a gentleman about her displayed painting.  That gentleman was Alasdair Kerr, a neighbour near her home. All is enough to send Violet back to Warwickshire. An important female artist, Cristabel Bilbury, joins her to continue her instruction. Here Violet again meets Alasdair. He recognizes a fellow thinker in Violet but will that be enough?  There’s a history between the Kerr’s and the Richmond’s / Arden’s.  That history is going to play out in dangerous ways. A fascinating regency tale woven around ...

A Highly Courageous Adventure  (Flora Hyde-Clare Mysteries #2)   by Lynn Messina               ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Flora Hyde-Clare (cousin to the Bea, the Duchess of Kesgrave)  and her family have travelled to Sebastian’s (Holcroft the Holy) home in Bedfordshire to meet his family. Flora thinks that this is to be sure of his family’s  approval of her before proposing. To that end she’s learned all she can about the patriarch Holcroft’s latest passion—cabbages. As Flora so eloquently murmurs in a ramble to herself, hopefully Sebastian’s family will think she’s not just a piece a lovely piece of fluff after all, but a woman of substance. What she quickly learns is that the family are intolerant snobs who deliver cutting insults with glee. It turns out Sebastian’s arranged it all so that Flora can determine as to whether or not she still wants to marry him after meeting his family. It also turns out that Holcroft senior’s new agriculture love ...

Introducing Mrs. Collins : A Novel by Rachel Parris           ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Fascinating, hypothetical insight into Charlotte Lucas (Elizabeth Bennett’s friend) and Mr Colins (the heir to Elizabeth Bennett’s home)—their personalities, their formative interactions, and their marriage.  I’ve often wondered about Charlotte, her marriage to Mr. Collins, her relationship with her husband’s patron Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Parris has given us an alternative view of Charlottes life, the off the page life. They take center stage. I had thought her life would be no more than a constrained unhappy expanse marching towards finality. I’m so glad Parris has a richer insight than me. We see the painful awareness of each other of Catherine and Mr. Collins, the regulation of their lives, and the changes that come. Charlotte’s life takes some twists and turns, but always she returns to the status quo. Her future becomes remarkable, aided by a Mr. Collins none of us saw, includ...