{"id":6114,"date":"2024-11-10T07:01:30","date_gmt":"2024-11-10T15:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6114"},"modified":"2024-11-10T07:01:30","modified_gmt":"2024-11-10T15:01:30","slug":"celeste-connally-alls-fair-in-love-and-treachery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/celeste-connally-alls-fair-in-love-and-treachery\/","title":{"rendered":"Celeste Connally: All’s Fair in Love and Treachery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lady Petra Inquires #2<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Celeste Connally introduced the intrepid, fearless, convention defying Lady Petra in last year\u2019s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord.\u00a0 <\/em>Lady Petra is defying convention purposefully, declaring she will never marry, and since she\u2019s given a house and allowance by her father, she is wealthy enough to do as she pleases.\u00a0 She also has the ear of the Queen.\u00a0 It\u2019s 1815, and London is on the verge of Wellington\u2019s triumph at Waterloo.\u00a0 Queen Charlotte was a force at court thanks to the mental health challenges of King George III. \u00a0This affects Lady Petra, as the Queen invites her to investigate the mysterious death of the matron at an orphan\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

The matron had been killed in the chapel while the orphans were in their sleeping quarters for the evening, so Petra is quickly able to narrow her list of suspects.\u00a0 The death seems to be also tied to a threat to the Queen herself, as well as to the whole royal family.<\/p>\n

Petra is not a widow, but she is bereaved \u2013 her fianc\u00e9e had died suddenly shortly before their marriage.\u00a0 His death has never been fully explained.\u00a0 Petra has a current romantic partner who was a childhood friend. He also does some undercover work for the royal family, and of course, their investigative threads converge.\u00a0 Things are complicated in this story by the fact that Petra suspects her lover had something to do with her fianc\u00e9e’s death.\u00a0 I could not believe this for a second, and I was surprised that Petra could, and this is a quibble I had with the book.<\/p>\n

Connally paints a wonderfully vivid picture of 1815 London, whose citizens are enjoying the success of Napoleon\u2019s defeat – all of London is a party for a few days.\u00a0 This gives Petra and her paramour cover for their sleuthing, but it also gives cover to the forces that want to take down the royal family.\u00a0 The investigation takes place at night as London is lit up with \u201ctransparencies\u201d \u2013 window decorations with a lit candle behind them to make them glow.<\/p>\n

All of the clues uncovered by Petra and her paramour ultimately tie together, but the history part of the narrative, if you aren\u2019t familiar with the time period, is not always completely clear.\u00a0 The threads are disparate but of course connected, and further connected not only to the death of the matron, but to the death of Petra\u2019s fianc\u00e9e.<\/p>\n

What I loved about the first book was Petra herself.\u00a0 Much like Deanna Raybourn\u2019s Veronica Speedwell, she\u2019s an intrepid woman who has convenient ties to the upper classes (and is herself a member of the \u201cton\u201d).\u00a0 I hope ladies like Petra and Veronica did indeed exist in their respective time periods.\u00a0 Petra\u2019s band of investigators \u2013 who include a lady pharmacist and a fellow socialite who is good with a bow and arrow \u2013 add the to richness of the character tapestry in the book.<\/p>\n

I felt this was not quite as strong an outing as book one.\u00a0 I certainly enjoyed it, but I felt Petra herself, in all her brave glory, was a tiny bit muted despite some of the shenanigans she gets up to. \u00a0I certainly look forward to book three, however, and with the resolution of Petra\u2019s fianc\u00e9e’s death, I am now wondering about her vow to avoid marriage.\u00a0 We shall see, readers.\u00a0 —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lady Petra Inquires #2 Celeste Connally introduced the intrepid, fearless, convention defying Lady Petra in last year\u2019s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord.\u00a0 Lady Petra is defying convention purposefully, declaring she will never marry, and since she\u2019s given a house and allowance by her father, she is wealthy enough to do as she … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1445,1932,1933,1440,10,100,1276],"class_list":["post-6114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1815-london","tag-alls-fair-in-love-and-treachery","tag-battle-of-waterloo","tag-celeste-connally","tag-historical","tag-minotaur-books","tag-robin-agnew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6116,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6114\/revisions\/6116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}