Y’all… I have seven thousand books on my ARC spreadsheet to read, but instead, I keep picking up random new releases and books from my TBR that I’ve been meaning to read instead. Why am I like this? I’ve been on a historical mystery kick lately, right now I’m alternating between Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell series and Simone St. James’s backlist of wonderful gothic/ghost story mysteries. I’m having so much fun.
The Veronica Speedwell Series:
A Curious Beginning (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery Book 1)
A Perilous Undertaking (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery Book 2)
A Treacherous Curse (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery Book 3)
I’ve been gobbling these up as fast as I can. I’m currently reading book 4 and so far so good. From the reviews I’ve peeked at on Goodreads, this is a pivotal book for the two main protagonists.
This series introduces Veronica Speedwell… butterfly hunter, adventure seeker, and independent woman. Her wonderful companion is the bristly, brooding Revelstoke Templeton-Vane, or Stoker to his friends. He is a natural historian with a backstory almost as interesting and exciting as Ms. Speedwell’s. And I absolutely adore them together.
Each book in this series features a different mystery, but with each mystery comes new revelations about Veronica and Stoker’s pasts and is slowly but surely building up this couple’s friendship and laying the groundwork for their budding romance. I think I would be half in love with Veronica on her own (she is quite brilliant), but paired with Stoker as her companion I am bewitched.
The deeper I get into this world, the more I want to read. I’m at the point now that I will set aside pretty much everything else until I finish my series read.
An Inquiry Into Love and Death by Simone St. James
I discovered this author when I read and reviewed The Sun Down Motel earlier this year. I was suitably blown away and decided I needed to dive into her backlist.
An Inquiry Into Love and Hate is set in a small English town in the 1920s and features a lovely young woman, Miss Jillian Leigh, tasked with identifying her ghost hunter uncle’s body and packing up his belongings after his untimely death. But something is strange about the circumstances of his death. Was it suicide? Or a murder?
This book is just as creepy good as I expected it to be. This author does ghosts and hauntings so well. I read before bed and really shouldn’t have. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there is a lovely romance as well between Jillian and the Scotland Yard inspector helping her solve her uncle’s murder and the strange goings-on in the sleepy little town.
This was another great read and I can’t wait to get to the rest of her backlist. Three more books to go. Highly recommend anything by this author.
I have read St. James’ entire backlist – and I think the romance in An Inquiry Into Love and Death has been her strongest. That said, if you haven’t read it already – I thought the romance in The Other Side of Midnight was also really good.