Barbara’s rating: 3.7 out of 5 Stars
Series: Glass and Steele #6
Publication Date: 9/4/18
Period: Fantasy Victorian London
Number of Pages: 245

Oh! Happy Days are here again – sort of. In the last book, they found the physician magician and he and India worked together to create a new magical watch for Matt. Matt is hale, whole, and filled with more energy than he’s had in a long time. The only fly in their ointment is that Matt’s family still expects him to marry his cousin, Patience. Matt swears that won’t happen, but nobody can figure out how he can get out of it without causing a scandal and hurting his cousin.

With Matt’s health restored and no magicians to track down, they are getting bored. Boredom doesn’t last long and they are soon on the trail of a murderer. Oscar Barratt, the journalist who had written articles introducing the fact that there was magic and magicians in the world, has received threatening letters from someone – and when his editor is murdered, he believes he was meant to be the victim instead. When the police don’t think the murder and the letters are connected, Oscar asks India and Matt to investigate.

The investigation is filled with red herrings, twists, and turns and you’ll be wondering until the end. Are the Guilds trying to silence the journalist? Was the journalist the real target? Was the editor the real target? Is Coyle involved or is he a red herring?

On the romance front, things have moved – sort of. India and Matt have declared themselves to each other – but they have not made it public. So, Matt’s family still expects him to marry his cousin Patience. Matt’s uncle is holding something over his head – and Matt has to get sneaky and underhanded to get out of the betrothal. First though, he will try to convince Patience’s original betrothed to marry her. Barring that – well – you’ll have to read it and see.

In the meantime, India does something she must keep secret from Matt. We all know that will work out well somewhere down the line don’t we? 😊 So, while we don’t get a wedding, we do get declarations.

I can recommend this book if you like a quick, interesting mystery with a bit of romance. The characters are interesting and Aunt Lettitia is less annoying than in previous books. Hopefully, we will get a wedding in the next book.

Barbara’s rating: 3.7 out of 5 Stars
Series: Glass and Steele #5
Publication Date: 3/6/18
Period: Fantasy Victorian London
Number of Pages: 270

Naughty nuns, promiscuous priests, disappearing babies, lifegiving magic, and sheriffs run amok keep this book barreling toward its exciting end. Matt’s life is slowly ebbing away and if they cannot discover the physician magician soon, it will be too late for him. They learned the magician’s name and where he was taken as a baby – but when they get there – he and his records are gone. After twenty-seven years they didn’t expect him to still be at the convent – but they thought surely there would be records of his adoption and that the nuns would share information. They do learn about some strange goings-on at the convent at that same time – are they related to the baby’s disappearance? Somehow, they have to find someone from the convent who will speak to them – and it will have to be someone who was there twenty-seven years ago. However, the point may be moot when Matt is injured, India is kidnapped, and Matt’s watch is stolen.

In the meantime, Sheriff Payne has figured out what the watch does for Matt and wants it for himself. Yes, he knows what it does, but doesn’t understand how it all works. Frankly, he doesn’t care. He wants the watch because it can be sold for a small fortune. He doesn’t care what he has to do to get it, he will have it. Goodness, he is a nasty piece of work!

This was one of the more exciting and fast-paced books in the series and you could feel Matt and India’s sense of urgency because it is now or never for Matt. Aunt Letitia was as annoying as ever and I cannot wait for her to get a grand epiphany finally. For me, there just isn’t any reason to have let her hang around this long if she isn’t going to have some sort of grand epiphany and discover what a bigoted, selfish, prejudiced person she is – and fix it. We’ll see.

Still not much of any movement on the romance front and I’m pretty tired of that. It isn’t that we (and they) don’t know that they love each other. It is that India is so filled with self-doubt she can’t believe that Matt could care for someone so far beneath him – and that Matt knows he loves India but is so eaten up with feeling responsible for the mistakes and choices of others that he can’t act. In my more aggravated moments, I picture each of them with a blinking sign on their foreheads – it reads – “DOORMAT – come wipe your muddy boots!”

I can recommend this book if you are looking for a lively chase, an interesting mystery, and you don’t care about the romance of it one way or the other. I will also say that none of the books in this series would make a good standalone read as there is an overarching plot to the series and each book builds upon the previous books.