eyes.2c Reviews

Love, The Duke  (Say I Do #3) by Amelia Grey         ⭐️⭐️⭐️  The last thing  Drake Cheston Kingsley, Duke of Hurstbourne,  expected to be faced with after a long trip to the private hunting box where he was to meet his friends since their school days, the  Duke of Stonerick and the  Duke of Wyatthaven,  was a missive from an old childhood friend whose ill, Winston Stowe. Around a year later he’s entirely unprepared  to contend with was a truculent young woman dressed as a man  who’s  inveigled her way into his home. He comes face to face with Ophelia Stowe. Hurst had already twigged she was a woman but he’s rather surprised by her admission.  He’s further surprised when she declares she wants his help to find a valuable artefact, a chalice, stolen from her brother Winston’s church. Ophelia and her mother haven’t told anyone in the hope they can track it down. They don’t want Winston’s memory to be besmirched ove...

Lady Knight  (The Diamonds #2) by Amalie Howard        ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A heart thumping beginning with our heroine and her friends holding up a coach on Hounslow Heath. Lady Zenobia Osborn is the daughter of a duke. She’s in her second season and her father, Duke of Harbridge has decided Zia must marry. Zia doesn’t want to marry. There’s no one who’s caught her interest except her brother’s rakish friend, Mr. Ravi Nasser. That was when Zia was younger. He had been very dismissive of her. That had hurt. Now Zia attends a finishing school where she and some fellow students secretly read and discuss the works of thinking women like Wolstencroft. Their latest read is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Zia and her friends have formed a secret gang called the Lady Knights. They support the orphanage and school that’s part of the same land their school stands on. The school and orphanage has been targeted by the slimy Viscount Heller (who’s Rafi’a uncle). The Viscount and his cro...

No Precious Truth  (Cathy Marsden Thriller #1) by Chris Nickson       ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Leeds during World War II, police sergeant Cathy Marsden has been seconded to Special Investigations Branch seeking criminal gangs and deserters. Now e spionage is added—a whole new game. They’ve been joined by an MI5 operative desperately seeking an escaped German agent who’s been passing himself off as a Dutchman. A man the MI5 committee, the Twenty or XX, had hoped to turn. The MI5 agent is Cathy’s brother Daniel. The only woman amongst a few men, most accept her, except for one recalcitrant colleague. Cathy  has proved herself time and again, able to question people, including women, who have little time for the authorities. Many know her from her time on the beat, and take heed. The group comes close to catching the agent Jan Minuit.  He’s joined forces with the head of a criminal gang. The criminal’s motive is straight up money, now he’s a traitor. Cathy has a close enco...

The Duke's Lance  (The Duke’s Guard #12) by C.H. Admirand   ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The girl whose gaze he locked onto and a voice whispered in  his heart, “Mine”, is the companion to Emily Montrose, heiress, and now wife to Aiden Garahan. Helen Langley has secrets and fears. When she’s abducted whilst returning from seeking a position as a companion to the Dower Duchess of Flemington (and that’s another “saved just in time” episode) it’s O’Malley who finds her and this time he’s not letting her go! Another episode in my guilty pleasures read of the Duke’s Guard series. A Dragonblade ARC via NetGalley.                                               Many thanks to the author and publisher.

The Whitechapel Widow  (Emma Langley Victorian Mystery #1) by Emily Organ         ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ When Emma Langley’s husband fails to get on the train, having hopped off to buy a newspaper, she’s alarmed. What has held him up? They have decided to move out of London and relocate in Suffolk close to where William’s aunt lives. When Emma reaches Lavenham she leaves her luggage at the station and catches a return train back to London hoping to find William. That doesn’t work out so she returns once more to Lavenham  only to find there is no aunt’s house. She stays at the local inn overnight.  Puzzled and distressed Emma journeys back to Liverpool Station, London once again and is taken in by her kindly previous landlady. Together they report her missing husband to the police who open up the possibility that William has deliberately planned his disappearance. More distressing news follows when William is found murdered. His death pushes  open the door to h...

The Secret Detective Agency  (Book 1) by Helena Dixon        ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ An unusual spinster, an asthmatic mathematical intellect and his quite efficient manservant end up working for a secret agency within Whitehall. It’s 1941. Jane Treen has been running agents for an important behind the lines operation. When the operation appears compromised they were withdrawn. Jane had installed one with a minder in a safe house in Devon only she knew about. Unfortunately that agent has turned up dead in a local pond found by  Arthur Cilento who’s just arrived home from his own highly secretive war work. He’s quite annoyed that the people his house had been rented out to were Jane’s agents and no one told him. We have here a somewhat different trio of people who are determined to solve the dilemma. Then there’s the questions. Who else has been compromised? Who’s behind this? I was very cross by the chain smoking Jane who seems to have no thought for the asthmatic Arthur...

Our Dear Miss H. Is on the Case  by Violet Marsh      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ What a perfect pair Georgina Harrington and Alexander Lovett are. Although they don’t know it of course They first meet when Georgie’s cousin Percy, Lord Pendergrast  brings Alexander to her pit site. An avid antiquarian / archaeologist, Georgina has a dig at a mound on a strip of land in Essex she’d inherited from her father, himself a famed antiquarian. Think cliffs and smugglers. Georgina has found a gold helmet. Percy pretends to have found her artefacts and presents them to the Antiquarians of England Society. Unfortunately that’s the last Georgina sees of Percy before she’s bundled off to London by her wicked step brother in a plot to marry her off to someone. In London Georgina looks everywhere for Percy but no-one’s seen him. She’s worried and turns to Alexander for help. That’s when Georgina discovers her people! Her group! They’re wonderful, quirky and supportive. There’s plots within plo...

Method of Revenge (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #2) by Cara Devlin        ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Once again we’re thrust into the Victorian world of Detective Inspector Jasper Reid and Leonora Spencer. Leo is at a nightclub run by underworld crime figure Eddie Bloom with her friend Dita when she notices a woman in a dark cloak talking to another woman at the table behind her. The cloaked woman leaves just as the woman sitting at the table collapses and dies. Leo recognises it as poisoning and attempts to follow the cloaked figure. She looses her in the London fog. The dead woman is Gabriela Carter, wife to Andrew. The Carters are front runners  of the East Rips, a vicious gang operating in London’s East End. DI Reid is called to the scene, takes in Leo’s presence, and is not pleased. Due to Leo’s remarkable powers of observation and memory, he pays attention to her surmises, including the fact that inside Gabriela Carter’s purse is a death photograph of two children. With ...

The Bookseller  (DS Cross Mysteries #7) by Tim Sullivan       ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Another intriguing murder mystery with DS George Cross and his partner Josie Ottey at the helm. Their chief DCI Ben Carson as always ready to jump the gun and announce to the media situations that needed to be back tracked on. A bookseller of rare books is found murdered in the kitchen above the bookshop. His rather strange niece who acts more like a sixteen year old than in her late twenties / early thirties was downstairs attending to some display items and knew nothing. Edward Squire was the son of well known and respected bookseller, Torquil Squire, the proprietor of Squire Rare Books in Bristol. With George, we delve into the realm of all things rare books; collectors, including a Russian Oligarch, forging marginalia and signatures, and the selling of stolen goods. It’s into this world DS Cross and his partner Josie, now a Detective Inspector are immersed. (Let’s just say that promotion caus...

The Writer : A Thriller  by James Patterson; J.  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This murder thriller did my head in. Just when the Aha! moment looks like finally coming to the fore another twist is added. Three-card monte  NYPD Detective,  Declan Shaw called it. He’s right! Just as Declan is about to take control of life he gets a call about a murder. The victim is David Morrow, the doctor husband of a highly, no strike that, a phenomenally successful true crime writer, Denise Morrow. Think Russian dolls, interlocking pretzels, and three-card monte rolled into one, with something extra, and you might be close to working out what’s happened. As each supposed answer is clarified, it’s rolled over and something else comes on board. The end was almost an anticlimax. Almost I said! Gosh! Big surprise!! Kept me well and truly, almost frustratingly, engaged. (My frustrated self wanted to give this 4 stars, my just and fair self said 5!) A  Little, Brown & Co  ARC via NetGalley. ...

The King’s Messenger by Susanna Kearsley  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Andrew Logan is a King’s Messenger. King James VI has commanded him to undertake a secret mission from London to Stirling, Scotland. He is to bring back Sir David Moray. David had been Gentleman of the Robes to James’s dead son, Prince Henry. Andrew is gifted (or cursed) with the second sight, sometimes a handy warning. The way will be fraught, the way back even more dangerous as the group dodges David’s cousin’s forces, and the King’s treacherous minions. The story is told from the viewpoints of all the major characters, except King James, a hard and dangerous man. The Queen, Anna of Denmark, is stopped by a blind man, possibly a seer, who gives her a message from her dead son that has her planning for what might come. Concerned for her father who is the the King’s master scrivener, Phoebe Westaway joins the party. Laurence Westaway has been ordered by the King to write down everything Sir David says. Andrew doesn’t want her to...

The Women on Platform Two : A Novel  by Laura Anthony      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Poignant story set in  Ireland in the late 60’s early 70’s. Attitudes towards women in Dublin are . Contraception is not allowed. Pregnant girls are thrown out onto the streets. Let’s not even talk about the Magdalene Laundries. Girls die from backyard treatments. Women are their husband’s chattels, abuse in marriage is common but never talked about. The story of a group of women for various reasons who challenge the law is based on a true story, heroic and life changing. The law is different across the border in Northern Ireland. The women take a stand. We join Saoirse in 2023 Dublin. She’s just discovered she and her partner Miles aren’t pregnant. She needs to getaways to think. She ends up on a train bound for Belfast with an older woman Maura Davenport bound for Belfast, and is enthralled by the story Maura tells. So much so that she ends up staying on the train. A courageous loo...