A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem (A Lady’s Guide #1)

By:

Manda Collins

Blurb:

An intrepid female reporter matches wits with a serious, sexy detective in award-winning author Manda Collins’ fun and flirty historical rom-com!

England, 1865 : As one of England’s most notorious newspaper columnists, Lady Katherine Bascomb believes knowledge is power. And she’s determined to inform and educate the ladies of London on the nefarious-and deadly-criminals who are preying on the fairer sex. When her reporting leads to the arrest of a notorious killer, however, Katherine flees to a country house party to escape her newfound notoriety-only to witness a murder on her very first night. And when the lead detective accuses Katherine of inflaming-rather than informing-the public with her column, she vows to prove him wrong.

Detective Inspector Andrew Eversham’s refusal to compromise his investigations nearly cost him his own career, and he blames Katherine. To avoid bad publicity, his superiors are pressuring him to solve cases quickly rather than correctly. When he discovers she’s the key witness in a new crime, he’s determined to prevent the beautiful widow from once again wreaking havoc on his case. Yet as Katherine proves surprisingly insightful and Andrew impresses Katherine with his lethal competency, both are forced to admit the fire between them is more flirtatious than furious. But to explore the passion between them, they’ll need to catch a killer.

Review:

A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem is the book I meant to check out months ago when I got the wrong book. Finally, I managed to get the right one, and I couldn’t finish it. I read over 40%, so I feel comfortable leaving a review, but I’m not going to rate it or count it toward my yearly total.

I often take a few chapters to get into a book, unless the book is just that good. I’ll read some pages, then set it down, do something else, and return to it. The problem I had with A Lady’s Guide was that I kept putting it down. There was nothing wrong with the book. It was well written, and the premise was interesting. I didn’t even hate any of the characters. I just could not get into it.

I believe the issue was pacing. The blurb makes it sound like a mystery romance fusion with a regency era setting. The first half of the book was almost completely devoid of romance. It was also pretty light on mystery. We knew there was a killer and that the wrong person had been charged with the crimes, but it wasn’t until over a third of the way through that there was any movement on that front either. Honestly, the story moved too slow for me and couldn’t hold my attention.