Perhaps it is my love of Charles Dickens and the gritty underbelly of my home away from home London around the industrial revolution, but the word rookery immediately caught my eye when perusing a new stash of freebie books at my favorite worktime hangout. Or perhaps it was simply the ever present hunt for the next new author of my heart.
Here is a little blurb from Greyle’s website about the book:
Fanny Delarive is no lady, and so she’s allowed to go everywhere: the dockside lair of notorious criminals, the glittering ballrooms of the haut ton, even the dark, secret places of Marcus Kane, Lord Chadwick’s bedroom. Well, perhaps not allowed there, but certainly welcome as Fantine and Marcus scramble through debris and diamonds, hidey-holes and hideaways in search for the mysterious criminal Teggie.
In No Place for a Lady, Greyle tops her previous efforts with a fast-paced historical complete with side-splitting humor. Her trademark dialogue is in beautiful form with witty comebacks and tender endearments, right before the plot picks you up and tosses you off in another direction.
No wonder the Madcap award for romantic comedy put her right alongside Teresa Medeiros and Betina Krahn!
Says Greyle, “I try not to push for humor, but let it come from the characters themselves. That’s why I created Fanny and Marcus as complete opposites. Fanny Delarive is a dockside criminal…perhaps. Marcus is the stiffest of the haut ton…maybe. When the two are forced to work together, humor is a natural result. And so are the romantic sparks as they’re chased by killers through the London underbelly, a society ball, and of course, his lordship’s chamber.”
This was a change of pace and fun–if the characters weren’t expertly drawn…at least the plot was imaginative. And I truly love the villain characters, even if the ending was a bit anti-climatic. This is almost the opposite experience of my other recent foray into new author territory with the Anna Campbell misogyny undercurrents–here is a heroine who we can sink our teeth into and cheer for her bravery and desire to remain true to herself in the face of poverty and constant conflict.
I recommend this book for adventuresses of the hist-ro variety who like finding new authors and sampling the murky waters of historical London–for once we get a taste of the dockside rather than the ballroomside!
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