Sunday, February 25, 2018

2018 book 35

Tilly Wallace's Secrets to Reveal
A friend who knows that Recency-era fantasy novels are my jam recommended this to me, and it was pretty fun! It starts off on a low note for me, as the heroine laments that she can't make any female friends, yet she dismisses her boarding-house-mate's conversations as "inane chatter" because she is clearly Not Like Other Girls. The world-building and the love interest coming from a troop of Scottish werewolves are more than a little reminiscent of Gail Carriger--Wallace is definitely playing in that sandbox. I did wish for a more attentive editor; we shouldn't have to be told six times in the first couple chapters that most people think the protagonist is a maid (when really she is a secretary/codebreaker) and the “inane chatter” of women shouldn’t have come up even once, let alone multiple times. There were a few other things that seemed to be errors, too. In general, the writing is a bit overwrought and I wished things had been polished up a bit. The romance and the spy stuff are both pretty cute, though. B.

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