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A review by reading_historical_romance
My Lady's Secrets by Katy Moran
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
My Lady’s Secrets is the perfect example of my reasoning not to DNF an ARC before 50%, because if I picked this one up as a casual reader, I would have. But the last 50% was SO GOOD. It makes me sad that this book suffers from needless obfuscation by the author in an effort to be clever. If she had just started telling us the story with clear delineations between the past and the present, told the backstory in chronological order, and didn’t try to be “literary” with needless compound prosy sentences that made everything hard to follow, this would have been a great book.
I think part of the problem is that the author didn’t have a clear vision of what she wanted this novel to be, so it tries to be too many things at once. Based on the last 50%, this is a second chance, slow burn historical romance between two English spies who were compromised during the infamous Siege of Badajoz in 1812, and who unwittingly discover and then infiltrate a network of free traders after returning home.
The first 50% is another novel entirely – a confusing jumble of disconnected hints about how a young woman who purposely committed adultery as an act of revenge against her philandering husband survived after leaving Britain in disgrace. (She was recruited to become a spy.) She is later given an assignment by the War Office to identify the person who assassinated the English Prime Minister by her former handler.
Unfortunately, we’re given way too many characters to keep straight, and it was nearly impossible to determine how they are all related. Similarly, there are so many subplots going on I’m still not sure that I understand how they’re all connected, if at all. And the random role that Lord Byron (yes, that Byron!) plays in the whole thing, and how he knows the main characters, and why he owes them favors? No idea what any of that was about.
In the end, it really was Greville who was the true star of this novel, and who made the last half of the book worth reading. His devotion to Cressida helped tie much of the story together so that I actually felt satisfied at the end despite the trainwreck that came before.
Thank you Netgalley and Aria for the opportunity to read and review this novel. All opinions are my own.
I think part of the problem is that the author didn’t have a clear vision of what she wanted this novel to be, so it tries to be too many things at once. Based on the last 50%, this is a second chance, slow burn historical romance between two English spies who were compromised during the infamous Siege of Badajoz in 1812, and who unwittingly discover and then infiltrate a network of free traders after returning home.
The first 50% is another novel entirely – a confusing jumble of disconnected hints about how a young woman who purposely committed adultery as an act of revenge against her philandering husband survived after leaving Britain in disgrace. (She was recruited to become a spy.) She is later given an assignment by the War Office to identify the person who assassinated the English Prime Minister by her former handler.
Unfortunately, we’re given way too many characters to keep straight, and it was nearly impossible to determine how they are all related. Similarly, there are so many subplots going on I’m still not sure that I understand how they’re all connected, if at all. And the random role that Lord Byron (yes, that Byron!) plays in the whole thing, and how he knows the main characters, and why he owes them favors? No idea what any of that was about.
In the end, it really was Greville who was the true star of this novel, and who made the last half of the book worth reading. His devotion to Cressida helped tie much of the story together so that I actually felt satisfied at the end despite the trainwreck that came before.
Thank you Netgalley and Aria for the opportunity to read and review this novel. All opinions are my own.