Murder refined!

The Wedding Night Affair (Ash and Juliana #1) by L.C. Sharp            

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

An interesting combination of murder and an enforced marriage during Regency times. It’s 1796 and Heiress Lady Juliana Uppingham has been married off to a swine of a man. The morning after her wedding she wakes to her husband’s dead body beside her with his blood pooling around them both.

Sir Edmund Ashdowne, baronet, works out of Bow Street for the Fielding Brothers as a criminal lawyer. Juliana’s father the Earl of Hawksworth wants someone close to aristocracy to undertake the investigation. That’s Ashdowne. The plot charts its way through rather murky waters until the truth outs. It includes an underworld figure, the Raven, who’s working on binding various gangs together. The Fieldings see Raven as a major threat to the community and to the prevalence of law and order.

Ash is concerned with Justice. He doesn’t want Juliana’s elevated place in society to mitigate her being brought to answer for her actions—that is until he meets Juliana, and uncovers more about her life and her husband.

The story throws into relief the reality of children being coinage at many levels of society. 

Violence and sexual abuse in marriage could be an unlocked for trigger for some readers. 

It’s intriguing  to see Juliana’s transformation from being the “white faced-marionette [she’s] depicted in caricatures as,” to becoming a person with her own voice.

A torrid tale of the pursuit of truth at odds with the clamouring of the mob. Indeed these scenes were chilling.

The Raven is in the background, a chilling undercurrent that rolls along, sometimes to the fore, always there. And the puzzle around Silence, Ash’s sister, is another beguiling story to be told, I’m sure.

An introductory treat to the pen of a new historical romance novelist 

I’m looking forward to the next in the series.

A Harlequin - Carina Press ARC via NetGalley 

Please note: Quotes taken from an advanced reading copy maybe subject to change

(Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)