eyes.2c Reviews

Tall, Duke, and Scandalous  (Byronic Book Club #5)   by Amy Rose Bennett           ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Miss Jane Delaney  has money problems. Her mother is gambling and step-sister is being blackmailed. There’s a further desperation to do with ownership of her Grandfather’s bookshop which for Jane is heartbreaking  So when her mother and sister leave her at a masquerade to make her own way home at midnight through a fog (Yikes! Who does that? Unforgivable!) Jane hits upon a scheme. The licentious Duke of Roxby’s door is open, there’s a raucous party happening, and if Jane could find out some juicy scandal she could sell it to her contact at the newspaper, The London Tatler. It’s only later when she’s discovered by the Duke stealing a first edition book that Jane  regrets her impulses. After all Jane  knows he’ll never miss just one as he’s too busy leading a rakish life to know anything about books! Jane has misjudged badly! The Duke proposes a way Jane can get out of being charged with theft.

The Court Wa r (Godstone #2)   by Violette Malan      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A world of different modes (counties) reaching out from the court of practitioners (like mages) The White Court, and it’s balancing group, the Red Court (wherein lies the law) The world is out of balance we slowly learn, caused it appears by the creation of the Godstone, an artefact locked away for many years by a gifted practitioner  Practitioner Fenra Lowens and Elvanyn Karamisk know what’s at stake but before they can state the case for World health things come to a head. She has to persuade the Courts via the Council to work together to heal the World. This should be their highest priority. Fenra has been commanded to convince the Council that, “ The world … and everything in it, the Modes, practitioners, mundanes, rivers,  mountains, animals, everything is a piece of one organism. The  World had already begun to fail, and when … the Godstone [was torn]from it, it lost the ability to act in its own defense, and it los

Redemption  (Eva “Lightning Dance” Duran #1)   by Deborah J Ledford       ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Eva “Lightning Dance” Duran, is a policewoman with the Taos County Sheriff’s Department. Eva is a member of the Taos Pueblo nation. She liaises between the Reservation Police and the County Department. Her best friend Paloma “White Dove” Arrio has disappeared, along with three other First Nations women. A ll are Hoop dancers. It’s been some weeks, and it’s only now that the outside world becomes aware of what’s been happening. Eva finds a body in a hunting area on a borderline area between the County and the Rez.  It’s  one of the missing women, not White Dove, arranged in traditional ceremonial dress, that’s interestingly not genuine. The elders don’t want the FBI called in on Sovereign Land, even though it might give access to valuable data. White Dove had been an amazing Hoop dancer until on the way home from competitions she’d been in a collision. She was left injured and her husband dead.  Her pai

The Baron and the Lady Chemist  (The Grantham Girls #2) by Alissa Baxter      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Our heroine, Dorothea Grantham, has a very different passion/hobby. Chemistry, and in particular the using of electricity to dye silks into brilliant colors. Thea then embroiders the fabrics, often with gold or silver thread, producing the most startling shawls and fichus. So lovely that many think she’s wearing smuggled goods.  Britain at this stage has banned silks from Italy and France. This has become a lucrative item for smugglers and Thea finds herself the target of many knowing nods.  Thea can’t explain her silks, as her grandmother has forbidden her to discuss her hobby within the hearing of Polite Society. One of those inquiring after her ‘purchases’ is Lord James Castleroy, a baron and a rather bothersome man who caught her coming out of her workshop with her hem ablaze after a chemistry mishap. Unknown to Thea, James is part owner in a silk mill near Macclesfield. Hence his interest in

A Bride by Morning  (Private Arrangements) by Katrina Kendrick        ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A tale of love denied, lost in the miasma of spies, traitors and a man driven to do unspeakable things for Queen and country. How could Gabriel St Clare, now Earl of Montgomery, return to the woman he loved when he’s so unclean! Meanwhile Lydia Cecil waits ten years for Gabriel the person she’s loved forever (since a child) to come home, only to be greeted by silence and a cold shoulder. What brings Gabriel to his knees, to buckle in his resolve? When Lydia is in danger from a Russian spy who’s out for revenge! Protecting Lydia is his concern, but maybe she doesn’t agree with his methods! A page turner that had me metaphorically flipping pages as I hoovered up this engaging, second chance romance, with a twist! An  Aria & Aries  ARC via NetGalley.                                               Many thanks to the author and publisher.

Best Served Cold  (Rick Montoya Italian Mystery #8) by David P. Wagner      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I really enjoyed this Italian mystery. Rick Montoya is an American living in Rome as a translator and does work from time to time for the police. We first see him in Palermo doing hush hush translations for a mafia witness’ statement. It turns out Rick is actually the nephew of the Commissario of Rome, Piero Fontana. Rick’s girlfriend, Betta Innocenti is with the art fraud squad. She’s currently in Pisa looking into the theft of a painting from a church. Rick, having finished his assignment in Palermo drives to Assisi help out an old US college friend whose leading a religious tour around Assisi. The guide has disappeared and friend Zeke needs a translator. Actually the guide’s found just as Rick gets to Assisi. The bad news is that he’s dead. As part of the police enquiry the group will have to be questioned. Rick’s uncle organizes with the local police for Rick to translate when the police questio

Death in Print  (St Just Mystery #5) by G.M. Malliet   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Detective Chief Inspector St. Just is attending a literary event in Oxford with his fiancé crime writer and Cambridge don, Portia De’Ath.  A reasonably new publishing house, Castle Publishing, the brainchild of Sir Boniface Castle, has burst on the scene poaching exceptional writers and editors and having now published a literary masterpiece by  Jason Verdoodt,  The White Owl. Unfortunately the drinks and dinner for the bright new star of the literary world turns into a murder scene. Of course St. Just ends up pursuing the case along with the local constabulary. The murdered man was a right manipulative piece. His modus operandi included sexual harassment, denigrating everyone, a sense of entitlement, a faked biography, and it now appears, plagiarism.  Sparse writing with delightful observations on St. Just’s part presents an engaging cosy murder mystery. I did wonder about the prologue and what happened. All was revealed

The Borgia Portrait  (A Venetian Mystery #2) by David Hewson   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Hewson has produced an impressive mystery novel that explores the hidden and dark parts of Venice. Arnold Clover (first met in The Medici Murders) has been referred to Lizzie Hawker, the only surviving daughter of the missing, presumed dead Countessa Scacchi, to  translate for her in a legal case. The city has concerns about the subsistence of the family palazzo, Ca’Scacchi just off the Grand Canal. The city has demanded legal right of entry to check.  When the city engineers begin investigating the subsistence what they find is a crypt with a dead body dressed in a distinctive dress owned by the Contessa. A letter in a typewriter gives a mysterious message. The palazzo has had a chequered history and is believed by locals to be cursed. Treasures belonging to the palazzo have disappeared over the years, including a hidden, erotic portrait of Lucia Borgia. The mysterious Lucia portrait, owned by the Scacchi famil

The Lady from Burma  (Sparks & Bainbridge #5) by Allison Montclair   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I’m on tenterhooks the whole time I read an Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge novel. The ‘Lady from Burma’ was no exception. A client whose suffering from cancer seeks the help of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau. Mrs. Adela Remagen wants to make a booking for her husband for use after her death. But apparently she now seems to have suicided out of London in Epping Forest, Essex County. Meanwhile Gwen has being invited to a Bainbridge board meeting as an observer and seems to be running afoul of her lunacy guardian. Gwen’s courtcase to remove the lunacy clause doesn’t go according to plan. And that’s just the beginning. I can say no more without revealing too much. Suffice to say there’s a great deal of dirty work coming at the ladies from more than one direction A page turner indeed! A  St. Martin’s Press  ARC via NetGalley.                                               Many thanks to the author and

Gryphon in Light  (Kelvren’s Saga #1) by Larry Dixon; Mercedes Lackey    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The beginning of a new series centered around the gryphon Kelvren, wing leader of the gryphons of k’Valdemarr. Nicely setup to include the many and varied inhabitants of the Valdemar world. Rogue Barons are looking to secede from Valdemar. A problem when they’re going about it in entirely the wrong way. This is a coup supplied by seized goods from honest tradesmen. That the crown cannot allow so forces have been detached to dissuade the Barons. We open in the healers tents with a badly injured Hallock. Hallock gives permission to house a wounded gryphon in his tent.  I really like Hallock Haven of the Sixteenth Guard Regiment, and his wife Genni. The waif, the younling Jefti, is another character with promise. The making of a legend is not all it’s cracked up to be as Kelvren learns. But a disparate group is assembled to take up a quest, a journey to a lake at the center of the change circle area at th

Give the Devil His Duke  (Drop Dead Dukes #1)   by Anna Bradley      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Lady Francesca Stanhope has come to London to save her mother. Her mother had been embroiled a scandal years before. Consequently Franny’s father had been killed in a duel. Her father’s viscous brother, her uncle, Lord Edward Stanhope became the Earl, and had promptly thrown them out of the family home, giving them no assistance, and they’d had to make their way in a damp, cramped,  country cottage. Her mother’s health is failing and Franny consents to a season with the kindly Lady Crump who lives a step away from her uncle. Franny sees this as an opportunity to throw herself on her uncle’s mercy and ask for assistance for her mother. BTW  Lady Crump has a wardrobe of pink ball dresses recently made but never worn because her niece Dorothea married and not had her London season. So the dresses will be used by Francesca. Francesca of the red hair will endure the pink dresses if it gives her a chance to approac

The Crying Cave Killings  (Yorkshire Murders #3) by Wes Markin   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Got to admit it took me a while to come to grips with this Yorkshire mystery. The past keeps intruding on the present (legitimately so) as the situation is set up, and for a while it’s chaos . DI Paul Riddick is a confused, complex  character with the past bleeding into the now. Twenty years ago a teenage boy is found dead at Mother Shipton’s Cave, beneath the Petrifying Well. A petrified bear is missing from the scene. The murderer is apprehended but Riddock always had doubts Now another teenage boy is found dead in the same cave with a soft toy teddy bear in his backpack. Riddick (now on leave) draws lines no one else does. He’s damaged, compulsive, intuitive and often out of control. The conclusion is complicated, messy, unexpected, and I loved it! Just how many lives does Riddick have? As many as a cat it seems, even if his landings are way past his ken. I didn’t realize this is part of a series so obvious