eyes.2c Reviews

Never Gamble Your Heart  (Secret Society of Governess Spies #2) by Lindsay Lovise        ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Lindsay Lovise continues her Governess Spies series with wonderful tension between bad boy Jasper Jones, gambling palace owner, and a mathematically gifted young woman, Miss Frances (Frankie) Turner posing as a governess who’s finagled her way into Jasper’s household as a governess for his niece  Cecelia.  Cecelia is a handful but that doesn’t worry Frankie one iota. Frankie’s on the hunt for her sister who has disappeared after haring off to investigate her friend’s sudden and inexplicable marriage. The Dove, who has a network of governess spies in high up places is looking for whoever is behind a spate of young, outspoken women who suddenly find themselves forced into marriage. The common thread is Jasper’s gambling establishment. We’ve seen this trope before, rake meets intelligent young woman and his life is turned on its head. Lovise does the trope ...

A Properly Conducted Sham (Most Imprudent Matches #1) by Ally Hudson    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ My first read of Hudson’s Imprudent Matches series and I’m hooked. Widowed Lady Charlotte James has had one encounter with a man she’d called a friend who’d said he wanted to marry her. One short time with a man she thought loved her and Charlotte finds herself pregnant.  The cad not only spurns her but spread rumors about her so that all label her as a shrew and hussy. Now she must find a husband or be socially ruined. Going to a masquerade was her last desperate throw of the dice to try to find a a spouse, respectability, and a father for her unborn child. Who does she run into but the damaged Lord Leopold Bennet, Earl of Champaign. They share a portion of the wall to lean against. Lee is avoiding people in general. Charlotte is panicked by the male populations response to her. The cad has been busy. Lee has faced mental challenges  and bad reactions to the slightest trigger points ...

The Orb of Cairado  by Katherine Addison                                                                                                               ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Ulcetha Zhorvena’s friend Mara Lilana has died in an airship crash, along with the Emperor and three of his sons. Mara left a puzzle for his disgraced, scholar friend. Zhorvena has ended up writing false provenances for fake antiques.  Zhorvena has been accused of stealing an artifact, the Orish Veltavan. He didn’t. He was framed, but of course no one believed him As Zhorvena follows the clues from his friend who’d enjoyed puzzles, he realizes that the way back to scholarship might be within his grasp. What he didn’t count on is tripping over ...

Tartufo  by Kira Jane Buxton        ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A slight wind originates in the depth of the forest imbued with a pagan secretive scent. It winds through the undergrowth  stimulating and sensual, quietly and gently whispering in and around the small and charming medieval village of Lazzarini Boscarino. All have left but a few. Mayor Delizia longs for the fortunes of the village to be different.  Thanks to the chemistry, the magic of a truffle, change comes in an unexpected way. A slow start, gathering interest as the rather special story unfolds. A Grand Central Pub. ARC via NetGalley.                                               Many thanks to the author and publisher.

Grace of the Empire State  by Gemma Tizzard       ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ All I could think of was that iconic photo of workers sitting on a steel girder way above New York as the Empire State building was being built. It’s after the Wall Street  crash and finding work is difficult. Grace O’Connell and Patrick her twin are fortunate. He’s employed on the Empire State, as part of a four man crew, placing beams and riveting them together. Grace is employed as a dancer. She’d previously trained as  a  tight rope walker and dancer in the circus  her father had sent her to for training. Only when Pat injures his arm , and the club Grace works at closes down, the obvious, despite Grace’s fears, happens. (The problem is the other men would lose their jobs without the full team.) Thus Grace’s dilemma. It’s a cutthroat world. Grace takes her brother’s place, dressing as a man. There’s danger—of being exposed, of falling, and other complications. One workman has it in f...

Shadow at the Morgue (Spencer & Reid Mystery  #1) by Cara Devlin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A series of seemingly unrelated deaths come to the attention of Leonora Spencer and Detective Inspector Jasper Reid. A young woman has been crushed beneath the wheels of an omnibus, a necklace she wore is missing, a gunshot victim connected to a gang, the East Rips, turns up, and a missing man who ends up as a dead John Doe, are all in the morgue. Adding to the chaos is the undeniable fact that Leo’s aunt is suffering deteriorating mental fitness. Leo’s assists her uncle the coroner, supposedly typing reports. He is beginning to be not as steady as he once was. More and more her uncle is forced to leave her by herself to close incisions and tidy up the morgue before leaving. If discovered he and she would have their employment terminated. When Leo is attacked in the morgue and articles belonging to the body she’s finishing up on are taken how is that going to be covered up. Who would break into a morgu...

A Ruthless Angel Weeps  (House of Croft #3) by Sophie Barnes ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Continuing the dramatic note that A Tainted Heart Bleeds ended on Samantha and Adrian Croft are in serious trouble. Adrian has been arrested and he’s to stand trial with Clive Newton’s father, Viscount Stanton orchestrating a hurried trial. Samantha is beside herself. Peter Kendrick is appalled. Meanwhile Adrian’s friend Lord Edward Marsdale is visiting Adrian in prison and doing all he can. A pretty young girl is grabbed of the streets and Chief Constable Peter Kendrick is furious that Bow Street is being too slow to investigate. All these factors will come together, lives will be overturned and shocks will reverberate throughout the populace  As we close Edward is coming close to another of Harlowe’s adopted daughters and trained assassin and investigator, Miss Melody Roberts. Now what? An ARC via NetGalley.                             ...

The Lyon and the Lass : The Lyon’s Den Connected World by Callie Hutton  ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫   Lady Christine Spencer is an heiress whose wicked guardian uncle is going to force her into marriage with his lewd friend and holder of his debts. Christine escapes by knotting the sheets together, tying her homemade rope to the bed and climbing out the window, escaping to a new future thanks to Mrs Dove Lyon. The man she’s now destined to marry is a Scott, Laird Kerrigan Lindsay. His clan has suffered setbacks with a sheep ailment, bluetongue disease, wiping out most of the clan’s herd. He needs an heiress to help his people come good. Unfortunately he really has little idea of how strange her circumstances are to Christine and how his clan will react to her. At Luffness Castle he announces to the clan that Christine is his wife and then hares off to Edinburgh (on business to be sure but... Christine is left knowing no-one and having to organize the Keep. for goodness sake! By now I’m ready t...

Mask of the Deer Woman  by Laurie L. Dove       ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Carrie Starr  has taken the job as a tribal Marshall with Bureau of Indian Affairs for the Saliquaw Nation  near Dexter Springs as a way to transition back to the force. She’d been a detective in Chicago until her daughter had died from an overdose.  Carrie had tracked the supplier of the drugs, the perpetrator, down and left him with bullets in his back. Nothing proved she’d been there. Now she’s at a place her father had come from. Her brief was to look at the women who’d gone missing. So many! Currently she’s investigating the disappearance of Chenoa Cloud. Is she missing or somewhere on the rez? Her investigations will lead her into strange areas of tribal spirituality, murder, embezzlement, and a host of other challenges. So many problems, so many blank spaces, and when the hunter becomes the hunted things become very tight. A Berkley Group ARC via NetGalley.         ...

Earl Crush  A Novel by Alexandra Vasti      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I laughed, was sentimental all over the place, and pleasantly shocked by Lydia Hope-Wallace and her Earl. Lydia finds it hard to talk to people even though she’s a most erudite writer. She’s had seven unbearable seasons hiding in plain sight, uncommunicative and unhappy . With the written word Lydia is in her element. She secretly writes tracts on everything from land clearances in Scotland to women and divorce. She’s been exchanging letters and views with the Earl of Strathrannoch, Arthur Baird, for three years. As it happens the Earl needs money. Lydia, a heiress, makes a plan. She  decides to journey to Scotland to propose marriage to the Earl. Unfortunately things don’t go according to plan. Lydia  finds she hasn’t been writing to the Earl but his brother, Davis,  who’s  stolen off with the Earl’s plans for a rifle telescope. Something awry and if the wrong parties obtained the plans (lik...

My Inconvenient Duke  (Difficult Dukes #3) by Loretta Chase        ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I took to Lady Alice Ancaster straight away. Also to  Giles Bouverie Lyon, eighth Duke of Blackwood,  one of the three Dis-graceful dukes. When their disgraceful lordships, Ripley, Blackwood  and Ashmont showed up at any ton function , the rooms emptied. Not that they were invited anywhere because they weren’t. Most of the ton ran when they hived into view. It’s Ridley’s sister Alice who’s our focal point and Blackwood. A girl Blackwood had taught to shoot when she was fifteen, who’d he first met scrambling out of a second floor window when she was ten, bold and cheery as you please Alice has grown up. She’s spent a year abroad with her friend Cassandra Pomfret. Alice is part of the Minerva Society that takes on street children, educates and house them and find them employment  At the moment however she’s realized that if something happens to Ridley his black heart...

The Mismatch of the Season  by Michelle Kenney      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ What a whirlwind ride! Following the escapades of a young woman who wants to have freedom and not have to marry the purple onion Duke is anything but calm. Her first attempt at freedom has Phoebe Fairfax fleeing her home dressed as a youth on the mail coach. At a dinner stop she unwittingly imbibes in the landlords “devils brew”, challenges a highway man to a duel and is injured and rescued by the noted Corinthian Viscount Damerel who mistakes her for a ‘bit of muslin’ as Phoebe so succinctly terms it. Realising his mistake Damerel takes her back to her home and her dreadful older brother Thomas who is insisting she accept the betrothal pledge her father had made with the Earl of Cumberland just after she was born. It’s a matter of honor! However their Aunt Harriet persuades Thomas to allow his sisters to go to Bath for the waters for Phoebe’s younger invalided sister, Josephine. The visit doesn’t start w...