Author: India Holton
Publication: 15 June 2021
Format: Kindle eBook
Cecilia Bassingwaite is the ideal Victorian lady. She's also a thief. Like the other members of the Wisteria Society crime sorority, she flies around England drinking tea, blackmailing friends, and acquiring treasure by interesting means. Sure, she has a dark and traumatic past and an overbearing aunt, but all things considered, it's a pleasant existence. Until the men show up.
Ned Lightbourne is a sometimes assassin who is smitten with Cecilia from the moment they meet. Unfortunately, that happens to be while he's under direct orders to kill her. His employer, Captain Morvath, who possesses a gothic abbey bristling with cannons and an unbridled hate for the world, intends to rid England of all its presumptuous women, starting with the Wisteria Society. Ned has plans of his own. But both men have made one grave mistake. Never underestimate a woman.
When Morvath imperils the Wisteria Society, Cecilia is forced to team up with her handsome would-be assassin to save the women who raised her--hopefully proving, once and for all, that she's as much of a scoundrel as the rest of them.
Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff
I honestly wasn't sure if I would be able to read anything right away after finishing
Jane in Love -- which I teased and rambled about on
Friday and
Sunday. It was so good that I figured I would be stuck with another case of "eh ... not good enough" for at least half a dozen books after.
I have been completely enamored ever since.
Because pirates. And assassins. And flying houses. And Brontë. And pirates.
Before I was 50% in I already had 3 1/2 pages of my blog notebook full of quotes and notes and I found myself posting blips and bits on Facebook and Twitter because I couldn't NOT share.
Like this :
And, many hours later, this :
And those aren't even the "official" teasers for Teaser Tuesday ... because I cheat ... because, you know, pirate.
HERE is the official teaser (and the Tuesday Intro, of course):
I may have several versions of that on my phone right now and may have had to eenie-meeie-minie-mo which "Teaser Tuesday" got the final cut. There were far too many options and I had a dreadful time trying to decide which blip was the worthiest blip.
Something about Ned and Cecilia?
She was delicate, and dangerous, and the fact that he was completely seduced by it was going to make things very difficult indeed when the time came to throw her into jail. Or out of a high window. Whichever came first.
But, then there are other bookish quotes to be considered.
It was all as melodramatic as a Brontë story, and it certainly involved as many ghosts.
Speaking of ghosts, what about our resident ghost-whisperer, Pleasance -- the housemaid who knows "how to fly a house and seven ways to rob a duchess of her diamonds"? Surely she should be included.
She'd spent years dreaming of being captive in the dungeon of a madman, but the reality proved not as deliciously woeful as she'd expected. It was, in fact, plain uncomfortable. And boring, too.
Ooooh ... or perhaps Ned's friend Alex? Of course, we'll see much more of him in my dreams ... I mean ... in the second book.
With his dark, roughly cropped hair, unshaven jaw, and sardonic smile, he was most piratic pirate she had ever seen. His tall, scarred boots alone were enough to make a law-abiding citizen tremble; they would have fainted dead away at the guns and knives half-hidden behind his long black coat.
But .... but .... how could I leave out Oply? Or Queen Victoria?
Constantinopla's legs had trembled beneath her and she'd clutched Tom's hand so tightly her knuckles blazed white. She'd been born a pirate; the idea of flying houses had always seemed ordinary to her. But standing now in a stone behemoth of one thousand rooms as it hauled itself into the air, she felt the bend of gravity against sorcery, and had been horrifyingly aware that all that came between her and a crashing demise was one old lady's ability to maintain a rhyme.
See? Dang near impossible to decide which to use. This book is just that ridiculously good -- with a heavy emphasis on the "ridiculous" at times. And at times "scandalous" ... occasionally "sensuous" ... quite often "ludicrous" (especially when the men were involved) ... and a whole slew of other "-ous"es I haven't thought of yet.
So there you have it.
I'm going to hit "Publish" now before I type out another dozen blips and blurbs. Even then it wouldn't be enough. As it is, I stopped blipping and blurbing and writing stuff in my notebook around 70%. I still Kindle-highlighted ... a LOT ... but, quite frankly, my little custom notebooks are a bit pricey, and if I ever feel the need to revisit favorite bits from the last 30% (which, oh. my. goodness. SO good), I'll just reopen the book again. And again. And ...
Just go read the book. In March I'll be telling you to read the next one.
Because pirates. And witches (but not really). And Austen. And Shakespeare. And pirates.
