Red-Haired Ash Reads

After reading the Veronica Speedwell series I was excited to jump into this and learn about Lady Julia Grey, especially since she will be appearing in the next Veronica book. While I can see the appeal of this book, I unfortunately struggled with it. 

First off, Julia was not a character that I really enjoyed reading about. While I know she is trying to recover from her husband’s death and embrace her true self, she was a bit boring. She was also naive in a way that wasn’t enjoyable for me to read about. She is constantly putting herself in compromising and dangerous situations, even after being warned by a trained investigator. I wasn’t expecting her to be a fantastic investigator since she has just been a privileged wife up to this point in her life, but I also expected her to actually learn about investigating from Brisbane and take the dangers to heart. 

Like the Veronica Speedwell series, the tension between Brisbane and Julia is there from the beginning and it will clearly take a while for anything to happen between them. I am interested in seeing how it will actually develop since there is also a lot of baggage that these two need to work through. 

The mystery in this was both interesting and boring somehow. It meanders a lot with nothing happening for long stretches of time until the end when everything happens at once. I was not expecting all the revelations at the end on who killed her husband and why. I also wasn’t expecting everything that was revealed about her husband. So I liked that the true villain was hard to determine, but really struggled with everything leading up to it. 

Overall, Julia was not the character I was expecting and currently I don’t really love her. I am more interested in learning about Brisbane. I think I will read book two and see if it changes my feelings on this series. 

TW: death of spouse (ch. 1); death of a child mentioned briefly; banishment; ableism; antisemitism; homomisia; racism; cheating recounted; arson; suicide briefly mentioned; 

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