Scan barcode
tessisreading2's review
4.0
Super fun court intrigue with a side of romance and a soupçon of ghosts. Our heroine and narrator, Inessa, is a lady-in-waiting to a very naughty Duchess; her nemesis is the duchess’s brother the duke’s (yeah, yeah, just go with it) right-hand man, Lord Cameron Estley. (The names in this world are a mix of basically whatever; again, just go with it.) As the duke and the duchess play power games against each other, Inessa does her best to represent her ladyship’s interests - often thwarting Cameron’s attempts to stop her. In best romance-novel fashion this frequently involves having to kiss him, hide secret documents in her cleavage, etc. The hijinks and plots of the ducal court are very entertaining, the stakes are generally low, and there’s some real heart at its center - Inessa has her reasons for being so loyal to the duchess and Cameron is an astute observer of human nature who understands what they are.
That said, the reading experience was very uneven - the book was written in the present tense and the English-language translation, while mostly correct, was clearly done by a non-native speaker. Like, the words are technically accurate but still aren’t the right word for a situation, or the grammar, while technically acceptable, isn’t the way something is usually phrased. It makes for kind of a bumpy read, so if you’re a reader to whom prose is super important, you probably won’t enjoy this.
I’ll go ahead and add content warnings:
That said, the reading experience was very uneven - the book was written in the present tense and the English-language translation, while mostly correct, was clearly done by a non-native speaker. Like, the words are technically accurate but still aren’t the right word for a situation, or the grammar, while technically acceptable, isn’t the way something is usually phrased. It makes for kind of a bumpy read, so if you’re a reader to whom prose is super important, you probably won’t enjoy this.
I’ll go ahead and add content warnings:
Spoiler
references to sexual abuse, sexual assault, and murder; at one point the heroine and her friends research and stage a fake suicide attempt.
More...