Title: A Sinister Revenge
Author: Deanna Raybourn
Series: Veronica Speedwell #8
Pages: 319
Months after Stoker leaves for Bavaria, Veronica and Tiberius hunt him down and lure him back to London with the job offer of preparing a iguanodon for a dinner party. Tiberius also wants them to help solve the mystery of who is threatening to kill him and his old group of friends, the Seven Sinners.
I have mixed feelings about this book. When I jumped into this book, I expected Veronica and Stoker to reconcile pretty early and then work together to solve the mystery. Unfortunately, Veronica and Stoker remain at odds until the very end of this book when Veronica finally discusses her feelings with Stoker. Because of this, I found the mystery in this one a bit lackluster because they weren’t working together and it was missing all the banter between them, which is one of my favorite things about these two.
One of the things about Stoker and Veronica’s relationship that I did like was that Stoker finally set some boundaries with Veronica. He has been the one who has done most of the pursuing up to this point and I liked seeing him finally confront Veronica and tell her she needs to make an effort to express her feelings. Unfortunately, it does take her a while but in the end we do see a resolution in their relationship. Hopefully, the next book will show a healthier relationship for these two.
The mystery of finding the Seven Sinner’s killer was interesting and unexpected, but also not as exciting as previous ones. The reveal of who the villain was was unexpected but I don’t like how the punishment was handled, especially considering Veronica was the one who suggested it. I did love that we got to see more of Tiberius and Merry. Tiberius continues to be one of my favorite side characters and I hope we see more of him in the future.
Overall, this was a good mystery but the lack of partnership between Veronica and Stoker was disappointing. These two may be able to understand each other very well but they are absolutely terrible at actual communication for this relationship.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Amazon
Previous books and reviews for the series:
Red-Haired Ash Reads 