It was a quick, easy read, but I cannot rate it higher for a few reasons--which I will get to later in the review.
Dido Kent, spinster, is called upon by her brother to aid her niece whose fiance has had an abrupt change of heart about their upcoming nuptials, and has fled. On the day Dido arrives, a woman is found murdered in the shrubbery of the house. Are the two events connected? Dido is determined to find out.
I actually liked the author's writing style, and the mystery, while easy to figure out was still mostly engaging.
I felt that the main character, Dido Kent, was overall believable as a woman of her time period. She didn't seem like a modern day character plopped down in Regency England. And while I liked the fact that the author allowed her to have both strengths and weaknesses, and thus she appeared to be a well rounded character at first, I cannot say I connected much to the character as a whole. The more I read, the less likable she became. She could be overly-judgmental, and leapt to conclusions without proof of her conjecture.
There were also a few things about the book--as mentioned above--that I found disturbing and unsettling. Those will be discussed under a spoiler cut.
Again: SPOILERS AHOY!
The first thing that bothered me was that at one point Dido comes into the possession of medicine that is meant for the lady of the house, of whom she is a guest. The package is wrapped and tied. Her curiosity gets the better of her, so she opens it. It's a medicine that promises to 'relieve all female irregularities,' which Dido knows actually means that it promises to end a pregnancy. Dido is under the assumption that the lady of the house is having an affair. And since, in her mind ending a pregnancy goes against 'the laws of god and man,' she pours the stuff out, because as she told her sister in a letter 'at least she would share no guilt in the matter.' Of course, there's no mention of the guilt she should have felt by opening a package she had no business to in the first place. The whole thing smacked of moralizing by the author, and it really threw me out of the story and made me dislike the main character.
Second thing that bothered me: There's a side story about a colonel who is a potential suitor for a couple of unmarried ladies who are also staying at the same home Dido is. It's made clear early on that the colonel is a gay man. He also always seems to be in search of a young footman named Jack, and Jack does a lot of fleeing in terror from him, and so we're left to infer (through this and the tail end of a conversation Dido overhears between Jack and another footman) that the colonel is trying to force unwanted sexual advances on young Jack. Getting the colonel to leave the young man alone (which in and of itself happens in a very convoluted way) is the way that Dido gains Jack's trust...though she was so naive that she never realized just what was going on, only that Jack wished desperately to be away from the colonel. It's almost, but not quite played for comedic effect, and it completely reinforces the whole 'gay man as sexual predator' trope and I found that very upsetting. The whole subplot was just completely unnecessary and uncomfortable to read.
Third thing that bothered me: Dido has a potential suitor in one Mr. William Lomax. Lomax has a wastrel son named Tom, who has substantial debts. At the end of the book, Lomax implies that he would not be free to pursue a relationship with any woman until he is free from his son's debts. The final paragraph of the book focuses on the fact that Dido has decided that in order to have Lomax and a shot at happiness, she needed to find 'a woman who was rich enough--and foolish enough--to be tolerably happy as Mrs. Tom Lomax.' This is bad enough on its own, but another subplot of the book has Dido helping the unmarried young ladies (same ones that were perspective brides to the colonel), be rid of him. See, he was blackmailing their father into a marriage with one of them in order to pay off his debts, and Dido came up with a plan to stop his schemes and save the young ladies from his villainous clutches. So, at that time, at least, she felt that the idea of anyone being married to Tom Lomax was completely horrendous, yet when it came down to her possibly landing his father, she was all set to foist him off on some unsuspecting woman who she hoped would be 'tolerably happy' with him? Seriously?
(show spoiler)
I have the next in the series and will read it, but I doubt I'll be going any further. A lot will have to change in that second book.
And wow...writing this review made me realize I actually liked this book less than I thought I did. I've changed my initial star rating (three stars) to reflect as such (now two stars).
4