eyes.2c Reviews

The Phoenix Bride : A Novel  by Natasha Siegel     ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Don’t get me wrong, I love a good historical novel. When I first picked this up I just wasn’t in the mood, for something quite as deep. So I read a few lighter novels and then returned. I’m so glad I went back. The story has it all, illicit love, tragedy and rebirth. I loved the sound premise to this story. Set in 1666 London. Time of the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy and King Charles. Cecilia Thorowgood’s husband has died of the plague. Cecilia is distraught. She’s suffers various doctors paraded before her trying to cure her of melancholy. David Mendes is a physician come Portugal, now living in a Jewish neighbourhood in Aldegate.  He has been asked to treat Cecilia.  The story extends into a burgeoning friendship between Cecelia and David,  Cecilia’s increasing fear of entrapment, a  proposal of marriage from her sister’s husband’s nephew, her growing love for David, his fear of the ...

Dark Tides (The Fairmile series #2) by Philippa Gregory        **** 1670 and King Charles II has been restored to the throne of England. Alinor Reeckie and Alys Stoney have moved fromm the Tidelands at Foulmire to Southwark where they've set up a warehouse catering to smaller businesses. Brother Ned, a soldier with Oliver Cromwell, would not live under a king. He has migrated to the Americas searching for the freedom he yearns for, but he might just find that independence threatened by war between the settlers and the First Nations peoples of the area. A Venetian woman claiming to be Elinor's son Rob's wife visits along with a baby son. Rob, a physician is dead, drowned in the dark tides Venice Lagoon. Not only does  Elinor not 'feel' it. After all Rob grew up in similar territory "in the paths between sea and land”. That's important given Elinor's gifts. I do not like his widow Livia "Nobildonna da Ricci” at all.  Added to this, James Avery, Elin...

Blood On The Stone by Jake Lynch     Amidst the turmoil of these Restoration times King Charles II (and his two mistresses, Nell Gwynn and the Duchess of Portsmouth, Louise de Kérouaille, known as "the Catholic whore") come to Oxford. Charles has declared the sitting of the Whig parliament should take place here. Charles has taken extraordinary security measures with his Royal Guard. Of course this brings troubles to that city. BTW I loved that Lynch included the famousline Nell Gwynn is reported to have called to the rambunctious crowd, “Calm yourselves, good people… I am the Protestant whore!” Luke Sandys, is the Chief Officer of the Oxford Bailiff and it's he who is in charge of the city side of protecting the king against troublemakers. And trouble comes to one Luke cares for. When William Harbord, the Member for Thetford, an agitator of the Popish Plot, is found murdered, overnight the city sits a knife edge of explosive flash points. Popular option escala...

An Abiding Fire: Murder and Mystery in Restoration London (Thomazine and Major Russell #1)   by M. J. Logue         Fascinating mystery set during the Restoration times of 1663. Charles II is on the throne and expectations are somewhat murky for all parties. The two leading characters are unusual. The battle scarred Major Thankful Russell and his newly wedded younger wife, Thomazine Babbitt. Thankful is an ex-Roundhead and now a King's Intellegencer. The time has come for him to marry and he casts his hopes on the girl he knew as a young child. Many years his junior, Thomazine (Tibby) has loved Thankful since she was a child and sees only the Thankful she's grown up with, not his scars. "She’d considered him her especial property since she was two years old and he twenty-one." Thankful has decided they will make their home in the manor house of Four Ashes, Buckinghamshire, where he grew up with his sister, a nasty piece of work, rigorously Puritan, marr...