eyes.2c Reviews

The Lady Makes Her Mark  (Goode’s Guide to Misconduct #3)   by Susanna Craig      ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 I’m not sure why I pulled back from this title in the Misconduct series. I loved all the characters Constantia, Alistair Haythorne, Earl of Ryland, and his wonderful sisters. They were all fabulous. Constantia is the sketch artist for the ‘Magazine for Misses’ broad sheet, talented and so attractive—but a lady with dark secrets. Constantia is different sort of character but who she really turned out to be was just a step too far for me.  A Kensington Books ARC via NetGalley.                                               Many thanks to the author and publisher.

Rules for Ruin  (Crinoline Academy #1) by Mimi Matthews      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Euphemia Flite is called back to London after some years in Paris, having honed her abilities to pass as a gently bred lady. Who is she? A Rookery child brought up in a very peculiar orphanage, Miss Corvus’s Benevolent Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies. Her mentor and headmistress is even stranger, concerned with training her girls in everything from Latin to politics, defence to lock picking, including how do act socially in a variety of situations. Effie’s given an assignment when she returns, if she accepts, will free her to go her own way. Effie is to get close to the loathsome Viscount Compton, a powerful conservative Lord, find something dark out about him that will neutralize his might. Hopefully forcing the Viscount to abandon his opposition to a bill of rights for married women being brought before the House of Lords. That bill is important. It is the cornerstone for the rights...

The Wordsworth Key  (Regency Secrets #3) by Julia Golding                  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Dora Fitz-Pennington (actress) and Dr. Jacob Sandys (son of a peer), what a great pair! Their enquiry agency is coming along nicely. Dora and Jacob have taken some time off at Windermere Lake. A place alive with poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge amongst others. Somehow Wordsworth’s opus works has been taken. Dora and Jacob have been asked by his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, to quietly investigate. Jacob though is called home belatedly by his brother Arthur to his father’s burial. Things are not sitting well in that quarter. The new Viscount it seems is a stubborn, unforgiving prig, wanting to bend his family to his will. Women have their place and Dora is definitely ‘out of place.’ Meanwhile a body  with a shepherd’s  crook thrust thru it  is found in the Thames River, attached to a rope from the quayside. Alex Smith, associate of Dora and ...

The Silversmith's Puzzle  (Captain Jim and Lady Diana Mysteries #4)   by Nev March                  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ As always I’m absolutely consumed with Captain Jim Agnihotri and his wife Diana. I’m so glad they’ve returned to India—a breath taking, colorful and magical place, along with its squalor, religious differences, underlying tensions and gathering troubles for the colonial British. Diana’s parsi family welcomes them. Diana’s parsi friends and acquaintance? No! Jim and Diana are beyond the tight knit community’s social pale. Jim hurts to see his wife treated so. Diana walks through it all, sad but unrepentant for having married outside the circle. (I love how they relate with each other) However that’s not their main concern. Adi, Diana’s brother, has been arrested for the murder of his friend and business partner Satya Rastogi. Satya was the scion of a powerful parsi family who are jewellers.  What Jim and Diana will unco...

False Gold  (Abbot Agency Mystery #18) by Veronica Heley           ⭐️⭐️⭐️      We return  to Marston Hall in the Home Counties with Bea Abbot who’s left London domestic agency behind for a short visit with Sir Julian, Lady Polly and their infant son Pip. As a bonus it seems Bea’s portrait painter Piers will join them. Only it’s not going to be clear sailing. Bea arrives at Marston Hall to find the road closed. Entering by another route she finds  an officious female police officer who trys to direct her away,  a security guard dead, and the place up in arms. What’s more her friend Rosemary  who’s  been helping Julian has gone, her motor home’s missing, and a new estate manager, Major Ian Charpentier  seemingly in charge. From there it’s a messy time of mayhem, corruption, upper class youths running amok, and a village glancing over their shoulder constantly. Julian’s butting heads with his estate manager, who’s ...

The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin  (Ill Mannered Ladies #2)   by Alison Goodman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Firstly bother! This was such a great read I’m going to have to add the first in the series to my already teetering TBR pile! Lady Augusta Colebrook and Lady Julia, her twin sister had previously enacted the rescue of Lady Hester Belford  (along with Harriet’s convict brother Lord Evan Belford and Bow Street runner Mr. Michael Kent) from an asylum where she’d been incarcerated and treated dreadfully. She’d been placed there by her brother Lord Deere who’d inherited the earldom when his older brother was sentenced. Hester  had refused to give up her relationship with Miss Grant and marry as the new Earl saw fit. Lady Augusta already has a somewhat troubled relationship with her brother Lord Duffield, who keeps trying to make her moderate her behavior into what he sees as more suitable. Now Gus is totally focused on getting Hester to safety and proving Evan’s innocent of murder...

Homicide in the Indian Hills  (Jane Wunderly Mystery #6)   by Erica Ruth Neubauer      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Jane Wunderly and the delicious Englishman Redvers are now married and in India as part of Redvers’ job as a secret agent with the British Government. Actually he’s a spy. It is supposedly their honeymoon but when  an  english woman Jane has admired, Gretchen Beetner, is attacked by a tiger Jane’s shocked. Except something’s off. Jane and Redvers view Gretchen’s body at the morgue. This was no tiger attack Gretchen had been shot. India is in the throes of changing governing procedures. Redvers is attending a political conference at the hill station Ooty, (Ootacmund)  in southern India. Their investigations will lead them into dark territory, uncovering corruption, scandals, poisonings and murder. A lively mystery with wonderful leading characters. A Kensington ARC via NetGalley.                     ...