eyes.2c Reviews

The Earl's Christmas Bride (The Marriage Game)(The Worthingtons #7.5) by   Ella Quinn        ⭐️⭐️⭐️ A pleasing story of reluctant debutante, Althea Rutherford,  who wanted to travel rather than marry, and a jilted fiancé who is contemplating his future. Lucian, the Earl of Rutherford, joins his friends for a quiet Christmas season, and is pleasantly distracted. A hesitant and sweet Christmas romance where love quietly triumphs proving love will be no barrier to travel. A Kensington Books ARC via NetGalley.                                               Many thanks to the author and publisher.

A Year at the French Farmhouse  by  Gillian Harvey   ⭐️⭐️⭐️ What do you do when you’re made redundant? Obviously drink a lot of wine and bid on eBay for a house in France for a month. What do you do when you find out that you’d actually bought a house in France on eBay? Only two choices, scream or live the dream! However Lily Butterworth finds her and her husband’s dream for a life in France is in reality her dream, not her husband Ben’s. Is this the moment of walking through the door into her lifelong dream?  It seems so. Life in France is maybe more than Lily bargained for but she’s living the dream. Isn’t she? An interesting tale of not saying No! or rather grabbing an opportunity with two hands and saying Yes!  A Boldwood Books ARC via NetGalley.                                               Many thanks to the author and publisher.

The Duke Not Taken (A Royal Match #2) by  Julia London     ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Queen Justine of Wesloria loves her sister, but Amelia keeps expressing her rather forceful opinions, and doing the occasional outrageous action, like kissing a footman. It’s time to bring in the heavies—in particular, Lady Lila Aleksander, the matchmaker. Princess Amelia is to be sent to England for a stay in a country home, where she’ll be introduced to eligible parties.  All Amelia wants is for her opinions to be respected and someone to accept her as she is. She didn’t count on being nearly knocked down by the Grim Reaper, as she dubs the Joshua Parker, the Duke of Marley, a recluse struggling with circumstances surrounding the death of his wife in childbirth. Beckett Hawke, the Earl and of Iddesleigh and his wife Blythe have five daughters, and Amelia delights in them. I particularly liked that she played games with them, taught them the rules of duelling, and how to wear a tiara. A bored ...

The Highlander’s Holiday Wife (Clan Kendrick #5) by Vanessa Kelly  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Bliss! I love Dr. Braden Kendrick. Great opening with the likeable doctor in trouble, the get your throat cut sort of trouble. He’s rescued by an unlikely couple. A huge man and a woman carrying a sword hidden in a walking stick. Curiously his rescuers showed no inclination to talk with him, they had him follow them through alleyways to safety, communicating with each other using some sort of sign language. They disappeared when the watchman drew near. Meanwhile, children and a couple of young girls have been disappearing from the charity run by the widowed Lady Samantha Penwith. She’s worried. It’s unusual. Her Board ignores her. She’s also convinced her husband Sir Roger was murdered as he tried to get to the bottom of things. Samatha is determined to track down his murderer. Coincidentally,  Braden is asked by his colleague Dr. John Blackmore to join the Board of the Penwith Philanthropic Foundatio...

Murder at the Serpentine Bridge (Wrexford and Sloane Mystery #6) by   Andrea Penrose       ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Prototypes and plans for multi shot long guns, and the threat of nations outjockeying each other in their pursuit for dominance, dog the steps in this latest tale of Wrexford and Charlotte. Threads throughout the investigation all point to a treasonous government insider being part of a plot of stolen prototypes, and a secret bidding war being conducted for interested parties. The ruthless Lord Grentham sits at the center of it all trying to curtail the reach of friends who might be enemies. He demands Wrexham’s assistance, using the tactics of blackmail, with veiled references  hinting at exposing Charlotte’s activities as A.J. Quill, one of London’s most famous satirical artists. But is it smoke and mirrors? Charlotte and Wrexford can’t take the chance. The man who invented the gun action, Jeremiah Wilson has been found dead, fallen into the Serpentine. ...

The Winners (Beartown #3) by   Fredrik Backman  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ How does Backman do it! He’s genius, he’s sneaky—slippery even! The eternal war between Beartown and Hed . The story of lives told through hockey. You wade in with the two towns forced to pick a side, a winner, but you can’t choose.  Everyone has a story, everyone’s legitimate  It started with Benji and Maya, Ana and Kevin. It’s now came full circle.  In the beginning we are given clues, “Boys like Benji die young. They die violently.” Even though I knew it was coming,  I just sobbed at the ending. Fredrik Backman you’ve wrung me out! I sobbed for them all. I rejoiced where appropriate. We came for the ride at the beginning, and just hung on through the saga, hung on for everyone’s story. There’s a host of characters  remembered, appreciated or not, roles changing as the towns go on, and there’s some new characters with heart. There’s a new coach who’s brilliant, yet has trouble connectin...

A Lady Never Surrenders (Sisterhood of Scandal #1) by   Bronwen Evans    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Tiffany Deveraux had made an art of disappearing into a crowd. The effectiveness of being a wallflower was one she carried off with aplomb, intelligence and astuteness. No-one, except her friends, knew she had an incisive mathematical mind and had taken their pin money, invested it, and was so profitable, that she for one, would be able to have an annual income to live off in a place far from prying eyes. Mr Sprat, her stockjobber had been tardy with her accounts, so in widow’s weeds she payed him a visit at the London Stock Exchange. Scandalous!  Unfortunately Lord Slade Ware, the Marquess of Wolfath, her guardian Fane Deveraux, the Earl of Marlow’s closest friend, discovers her there.  Ever since she’d been carried into her uncle’s house at seventeen, distraught at the death of her parents at the hands of highway men, she’d carried a torch for Wolf. Now Wolf is seeing Tiffa...

Beachy Head (Detective Rutherford Barnes Mystery #2) by  Adam Lyndon   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Police procedural criminal mystery that kept me glued. If you thought Detective Sergeant Rutherford Barnes  was having a hard time keeping all his ducks in a row, spare a thought for me, the reader. After an eighteen month suspension Barnes is back, and tasked with investigating a death no one else wants. A drunken, abusive ex husband has been accidentally killed by the ex wife’s partner—an upstanding firefighter. The death must be investigated but it’s pretty open and shut accidental. Suddenly this simple case of homicide turns into a jailbreak, leapfrogged over by a murder, corralled by another death in custody, and the list continues. Three major events interrupted by associated threads of the continuity of order, or linked? Only Barnes is making connections. What it means is there’s dirty cops along the feeding line, and how far out and up does it go? Corruption often starts with bab...

A Truth to Lie For (Elena Standish #4) by   Anne Perry ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Despite her troubles with her last assignment Elena is once again called on by MI6 to take part in an operation. This time it’s back in Berlin (a place Elena escaped by the skin of her teeth) to escort a German chemist out from under the Reich’s nose. He’s part of the German chemical warfare program. The head of the division is a sworn enemy of Marcus Standish, Elena’s grandfather and previous head of M16. If he identifies and captures Elena, Marcus is in no doubt of the outcome.  Of course problems arise. Things don’t go to plan. Elena is forced to contact a previous source for help.  She ends up driving across Germany in her efforts to fulfil her mission. Does Elena’s character develop? Not really. She’s on some sort of plateau. She still has ground to makeup. It will take time for MI6 to forget her past challenges. But then they’re all members of the same old boys’ network. This German intervention w...

Mother Daughter Traitor Spy  by   Susan Elia MacNeal  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ An extraordinary story based loosely on real people who belonged to the far right in the early 1940’s, Nazi Americans and sympathizers in California. Violet Engle Grace and Veronica, a mother and daughter of Aryan descent, come into contact with members of the America First Committee. The group wants to keep America neutral and anti semetic   The America First (where have we heard that before?) Committee supported Hitler and planned third column attacks on various key points of American infrastructure. The United States is not at war—yet. These groups wanted to keep America out of Europe. They didn’t want Roosevelt to win the 1941 election. If he did they made plans to have the results over turned, and threatened democracy with a wave of attacks on various institutions. They had their own arm of militiamen—the Copperheads, based on the German Bund, the Silver Shirts and the Hitler Youth Movement. Violet a...

Something in the Heir  by   Suzanne Enoch  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Emmaline and William Pershing go to all sorts of lengths to keep their home, including borrowing two children from the ‘Stone Jug’ (St Stephen’s Orphanage) to be their children. Rose and George (to be known at the party as Flora and Malcolm) Emmaline’s grandfather, the duke, had a ridiculous codicil to his heirs having the use of the family home Winnover Hall. Well Emmie Hervey grew up here and when she got wind of her cousin Penelope’s forthcoming nuptials she decidly wasn’t letting her dratted cousin Penelope move in.  So she married her best friend Will Pershing and as time moved on, unknown to Will, sort of invented a family to keep the house. It’s now eight years later and they have to attend her grandfathers seventieth birthday party—and time for Emmaline to confess all to Will. All’s going well at the party but! Well, after a situation that involved eggs being thrown and the birthday cake sort of collapsing...

Murder on the Vine  (A Tuscan Mystery #3 ) by Camilla Trinchieri  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A story of murder interspersed with meals that sound so scrumptious that I was salivating. Really, every second page deals with a different food, or type of meal. What joy!  Nico Doyle an ex NYP detective,  Salvatore Perillo the local head of the Carabinieri and Daniel Donato, Salvatore’s assistant, are once again caught up in murder. Laura Benati, the manager of Hotel Bella Vista has reported that her bartender Cesare Rinaldo as missing. It seems there’s plenty of people with a reason to want to dispose of Cesare. Are their historical reasons for Cesare missing, economic? Nico is at a crisis point in his personal life. He’s attracted to local artist Nelli Corsi but where does that leave his feelings for hips dead wife Rita. He wants something more in his relationship with Nelli but he’s still grieving the loss of Rita. Conflicted! Underneath flows the stories of the characters personal lives ...

Mistress Mackintosh and the Shaw Wretch ( Brides of  Chattan #1) by   Rose Prendeville           ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ So Finlay Shaw, the “Shaw Wretch”, received his moniker when as a youngster he was persuaded away from his watch. That led to tragedy at the Battle of Preston, “where his callow blunder cost many mens lives.” Ten  years later and he still Carrie’s the name and his shame. It’s 1725 and he’s to escort a young maid to a secret convent in Aberdeenshire as part of a Chattan clan agreement.  Marjorie Mackintosh (Jory) is a young woman who has curvature of the spine. Men don’t find her attractive. So far Jory’s bridegrooms have failed at the last moment. Jory’s father had been killed at Preston and Jory is in the care of her uncle. Her uncle has decided to give her into a nunnery run by their enemies the Gordon’s, in the hope that they will constrain the actions of the Watch. Vain hope! but then nothing to loose and everything to gain. The...

The Night Watch   (DS Max Craigie #3)   by   Neil Lancaster  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ An acquitted murderer and gangland enforcer, Scott “The Axe” Paterson is found with  his throat cut. His legal advocate happens to fall off a windy cliff during a run. Coincidence or something more sinister?  The Police Standing Reassurance team, an interesting misnomer for a select team who report directly to the Chief Constable of Scotland, is asked to investigate.  Detective Max Craigie and his crew suddenly have their hands full. Is it possible there’s a serial killer at large? A police procedural that has an ending that’s as twisted as the deaths. An HQ Digital ARC via NetGalley.                                               Many thanks to the author and publisher.

A Dark Steel Death  (A Tom Harper Mystery #10) by   Chris Nickson   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Tom Harper has worries. Worry about his beloved wife Annabelle and her dementia, worry about his daughter Mary after her fiancé was killed at the Somme. Worried by the spate of killings that had no rhyme or reason. Turning over Leeds in pursuit of the saboteur, agent provocateur or whatever he might be called, turned up some other criminal rings operating but as far as a saboteur goes, nothing! Leeds, 1916 and an act of sabotage causes trauma and panic. A munitions factory is the first target, an army clothing factory the next. Tom must reach into darkness to find the traitor. His best men are gone to the war effort. He’s fighting to hold on to the few he has. An further insight into the war from an organisation that’s been decimated. All their young men gone to fight in the war, the one wouldn’t last beyond that first Christmas. And now—they’re gone.  A tense historical investigative read ...

The Rising Tide  (Vera Stanhope #10) by Ann Cleeves    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Vera Stanhope. A dumpy woman with an incisive mind, a terrier-like hold on problems, and the habit of chivying her staff to get results, sometimes pitting them against each other, all in the name of solving the case. Holy Island. Known to southerners as Lindisfarn. The scene of an ancient tragedy. Isobel Hall flew into a rage and left the island just as the tide was coming in. Her car ran off the causeway and Isobel died. That was 45 years ago. Every five years the group of friends who had been there gets together to remember Isobel and what they all had had. A special group bonded by their shared experiences when they were in last year in high school. Now another of their group has been murdered—although dressed up as a suicide. There’s a swathe of clues to go through, and false starts, overlayed by the sense of time and Hector’s bits of nonsense bullying Vera from the grave. The ending is one that gives ...

Back to the Garden   by Laurie R. King            ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A body found under a Gaddo statue in an old hippie commune. What relationship does it have to  Inspector Raquel Laing, SFPD, Cold Case Unit,  working on squeezing information about where the bodies are from an inmate dying of cancer, aka The Highlander? The death of young, long-haired blonde women are attributed to Michael Johnston. Stretching out the truth about where his victims are buried is part of his pleasurable game.  How to get this lowlife to give ease to families across the nation. Raquel’s investigations take her back to the 1970’s, to Rob Gardener and his inheritance of a Californian mansion from his very estranged father, to the current times and the now famous feminist artist Gaddo and her sculptures on the property. How it all fits together is legendary in scope and   puzzling in the extreme. An intriguing cold case that reaches into today and an exciti...

Murder in the Cathedral  (A Reverend Mother Mystery #9)   by Cora Harrison   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A young Catholic boy, Enda O’Sullivan, who sang like an angel and lied like with a straight face even as he once “tumbled a stall in the market once and tried to to persuade [Inspector Patrick Cashman] that it was a dog that had done it. Even though his mouth was full of cake and his pockets bulging with more.” And an archdeacon of the Anglican Church in Ireland. Who would want them dead. Reverend Mother Aquinas is concerned that this child from the slums was thrown out like so much trash. Patrick is concerned because he has a list of suspects that seem on one hand likely, and on the other not at all. As Patrick investigates further he uncovers a lot about the ‘man who would be king’ (the archdeacon), none of it good. In fact he was ambitious for the job of the Bishop, he lied, cheated and blackmailed. Who would not want him to go, on the other hand who was going to risk all to do so? Ei...