SusannaG - Confessions of a Crazy Cat Lady
Just another GR refugee. Other than that, I had a stroke in 2004, and read almost anything I can get my hands on, though I have a particular weakness for history, mystery, and historical fiction.
Currently reading
A Curious Beginning
My copy courtesy of Penguin and NetGalley - much thanks.
I have not read Deanna Raybourn previously, but many of my friends seem to like her, so I thought I'd put my name in the hat for this one when I saw it on NetGalley.
It is 1887, and Veronica Speedwell is burying the second of the two ladies who raised her. Afterwards, the vicar and his wife (a small-minded gossip) reveal that they have organized her marriage to a local landowner, a recent widower with six children. She reveals that they are out of their minds if they think she is going along with that, and returns home to find her cottage in mid-ransacking, by a man who then attempts to kidnap her.
This is prevented by a continental gentleman, a baron, who rescues her, and remarks that she has her mother's eyes.
Miss Speedwell does not remember her mother - or know who she was. (Or her father, for that matter.)
The only reason I didn't give it four stars was that I couldn't figure out why so much time was spent on our heroine, the intrepid lepidopterist (butterfly expert) Miss Speedwell, and her friend the naturalist, Stoker, joining the circus. The writing is very polished and as self-assured as the heroine, who never looses her cool.
I think fans of Ms. Raybourn will like this one. I'd read a sequel, myself.
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