I just finished reading the most awful book. It was a historical, romantic mystery and I am so happy I got through to the end—not because it got any better, but because it was so inspiring.
Have you ever read a book and thought, “I could have written that so much better!”? This was one of those books.
The plot was fun in that the hero and heroine were working for politically opposing forces to solve the same mystery. So, they both wanted the same thing but worked for different people.
There was, of course, a romance, which was not done too badly if you discount the pages-long introspections by both main characters (They were too long and said basically the same thing each time throughout the book.) However, the heroine was strong and brave and admired for it. The hero was scared inside and out, which the heroine patched and soothed, giving him back his self-confidence by the end. This is all good, although I do wish the heroine had had some sort of internal struggle as well.
My biggest issues with the book—there are two—are that the villain turned out to be a character who was presented as a good guy throughout the book without even the slightest hint that he was involved at all, aside from standing on the sidelines cheering the hero on. The revelation that he was the villain was stumbled upon by the heroine inadvertently. Now, I don’t know about you, but I like to try and figure out who the “big bad” is as I’m reading. That means there need to be clues as to who it might be. In this book, there were none.
My second issue was the heroine’s stepmother, who was a cardboard cutout of a villain complete with a screeching voice, foul language, and ugly dresses. I love an evil stepmother. I’ve written evil mothers (and aunts) in my books plenty of times. But they still need to be three-dimensional people. They must have a reason for being so nasty. The evil stepmother in this book had no reasons and very little motivation.
On top of that, she never got her comeuppance. The heroine only stood up to her once at the end of the book, and the woman simply left the room with a vague threat. I wanted to see her as part of the gang killing people. I wanted to see her hauled off to jail. But no, there was nothing. She will go on to terrorize the heroine forever. How dissatisfying is that?
There were, of course, a lot of historical inaccuracies, but considering everything else wrong with the book, that was less important. It was more a matter of the author doing no more research than watching the television show Bridgerton and then putting in anything she wanted—including having her sweet, innocent heroine cursing like a sailor.
Sigh… There are so many things wrong with this book, I have absolutely no choice but to write my own historical romance mystery. And I’ll do it right—I promise!