Lady Elizabeth Sinclair decides to spend the summer in Cornwall to avoid her brother and his plans to marry her off to one of his school friends. She’s not interested in marriage–she’s far more interested in botany and drawing and other scientific pursuits. I did like and admire that about her.
She is accompanied by her lady’s maid, Mabena Moon, who is from the area and has her own reasons to visit the Isles … her missing best friend, also called Elizabeth. This brings both women into contact with Elizabeth’s brother, the local vicar, who becomes friends with Lady Elizabeth. They are brought closer together as mysterious deliveries arrive at the cottage … deliveries for the missing Elizabeth.
I didn’t find the characters as engaging or the plot as compelling as I had hoped.
I found the story dragged in places, and The Nature of a Lady certainly wasn’t one of those books I devoured in a day or so. Even the climax didn’t work for me, because I wasn’t invested enough in the story.
The Nature of a Lady has mystery and suspense and romance, the things readers expect in a Roseanna M White novel. It had the unique setting, and the popular time period. It had White’s typical excellent writing style. But despite all the good things it did have, the sum of the whole was somehow less than the sum of the parts, and it left me with more of a ho-hum feeling than one of satisfaction.
This is the first book in Roseanna M White’s new series, The Secrets of the Isles. It’s set in the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, which brings together Elizabeth’s refined Downton Abbey-era upbringing with the wild roughness of Poldark’s Cornwall (but a century after Poldark). Recommended for fans of Carrie Turanksy and Julie Klassen.
Thanks to Bethany House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.
About Roseanna M White
Roseanna M. White pens her novels beneath her Betsy Ross flag, with her Jane Austen action figure watching over her. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two children, editing and designing, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna has a slew of historical novels available, ranging from biblical fiction to American-set romances to her new British series. She lives with her family in West Virginia.
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About The Nature of a Lady
Lady Elizabeth “Libby” Sinclair, with her love of microscopes and nature, isn’t favored in society. She flees to the beautiful Isles of Scilly for the summer and stumbles into the dangerous secrets left behind by her holiday cottage’s former occupant, also named Elizabeth, who mysteriously vanished.
Oliver Tremayne–gentleman and clergyman–is determined to discover what happened to his sister, and he’s happy to accept the help of the girl now living in what should have been Beth’s summer cottage . . . especially when he realizes it’s the curious young lady he met briefly two years ago, who shares his love of botany and biology. But the hunt for his sister involves far more than nature walks, and he can’t quite believe all the secrets Beth had been keeping from him.
As Libby and Oliver work together, they find ancient legends, pirate wrecks, betrayal, and the most mysterious phenomenon of all: love.
Find The Nature of a Lady online at:
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