Month: October 2022

A Bride’s Guide to Marriage and Murder by Dianne Freeman

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Historical Mystery, Part of a Series, Victorian Era (1837-1901)Leave a comment

A Bride’s Guide to Marriage and Murder (Countess of Harleigh Mystery, #5)Barbara’s rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Series: Countess of Harleigh Mystery
Publication Date: 6/28/22
Period: Victorian London
Number of Pages: Audiobook

Poor Frances (Countess Harleigh) has spent a miserable last four months. Her mother came over from America to plan her sister’s wedding – and then stayed on to plan Frances’s wedding to George. Frances’s mother is best taken in small doses – but so is all of her family. Ah! But tomorrow she and George will be wed, and while they are off in the south of France for their wedding trip, Frances’s family will head back to America.

Sigh – those best-laid plans . . . The wedding was wonderful with so much love and joy, then on to the wedding breakfast at her brother-in-law’s house. Frances and George were giddy with happiness – until . . . Yes, Frances’s brother Alonzo was arrested for murder. It seems that Alonza was murdering the neighbor next door while everyone else was celebrating Frances and George. Or was he?

So, there goes their lovely trip because they absolutely must stay and help Alonzo. They don’t believe, even for a second, that Alonzo murdered Mr. Cooper – even if he was found standing over the body with a knife in his hand. It seems Alonzo was very interested in courting Mr. Cooper’s daughter, but the nasty, scheming, Mr. Cooper wanted a title in the family. When another body is added to the count everybody is looking for motives, connections, and murderers.

This was an excellently written, well-plotted, and well-delivered mystery accompanied by a lovely romance between two bright, intelligent, witty people you just have to love. The only reason I didn’t rate this book a 5-star read is that one of the characters was heir to a title and he was threatened with being disinherited and having the title passed to one of his other brothers. You CANNOT do that and it annoys me when an author tries to use that ploy. Two minutes of research would tell you that the laws of primogeniture don’t work that way and it couldn’t be done. He could be disinherited and all of the non-entailed monies could go to his brothers, but the title, entailed properties, and entailed monies would go to the firstborn legitimate son. Anyway, it is a well-done story other than that and I do definitely recommend it.

I listened to the audiobook and really enjoyed the narrator, Sarah Zimmerman. Her voice was very pleasant, and you could hear the humor coming through. I could just picture my version of Frances with that exact voice. Her range of voices for the characters was well done and I loved how George’s frustration at not having any alone time with Frances came right through the voice.

I definitely recommend this book – and this audio version. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

Some Dukes Have All the Luck by Christina Britton

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Part of a Series, Regency Era (1811-1820)Leave a comment

Some Dukes Have All the Luck (Synneful Spinsters, #1)Barbara’s rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Series: Synneful Spinsters #1
Publication Date: 11/8/22
Period: Regency
Number of Pages: 343

I enjoyed this author’s previous series, Isle of Synne, where we met our current heroine in the final book. Miss Bronwyn Pickering is a Naturalist who specializes in Entomology. Her selfish, social climbing, overbearing parents aren’t enamored with her bookish ways and are bent on marrying her off to a titled gentleman. Bronwyn has spent years studying, analyzing, and collecting data – she’s even discovered a previously unknown beetle and she dreams of writing a scientific paper about it. That dream comes to a crashing end when her cruel parents went into her rooms, took all of her specimens, research notebooks, written papers, instruments, etc., and smashed them – then threw them all out. The only bright spot left in her life is her friends who collectively refer to themselves as The Oddments. Her parents have also just told her she will not be allowed to associate with those ladies anymore. According to her parents, her only goal in life is to make herself into the perfect lady in order to attract a titled gentleman.

Ash Hawkins, Duke of Buckley, had a horrendous home life as a child. Nobody was spared his father’s wrath – not his wife, not his son, not the servants, not even the children on the estate. He dealt wounding and killing blows with both his fists and his words. Everyone knew of his father’s reputation and took great delight in taking it out on Ash when he was away at school. As an adult, Ash knows he can’t afford to love anyone – he’ll taint anyone who is close to him – so when he ends up with three young wards he is at a total loss in how to handle them. He hires governess after governess and the wards just run them off. Then, the two youngest wards run off as well.

Ash is sorely in need of someone to raise his wards and when he discovers that the two younger ones have befriended Bronwyn Pickering, he proposes not ten minutes after meeting her. Bronwyn is sorely in need of liberation from her parents, so a marriage in name only would work for both of them. Until it doesn’t, of course.

This was a nice read – thus the three stars – but it just didn’t resonate with me personally. I didn’t buy the chemistry between Bronwyn and Ash and, more to the issue, I think I am just done with protagonists (particularly the males) who take on the sins of their fathers. I have read several of these – my father was a brute, therefore I am a brute – stories lately and I am just tired of them. So, while this was a perfectly nice story, it just didn’t reach out and pull me in. If you decide to give the book a try, I hope you will love it.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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