Tilly Wallace

audio / cozy mystery (7 hours, 20 min, #5 in series; best to read in order to follow developing story arcs) featuring supernatural creatures (and a partly-zombified heroine) in an alternate historical English regency-era setting.

Hannah and her new husband Wycliff are still uncertain of each other's feelings, but make a good team when investigating the mysterious disappearances of women near his crumbling estate in a country coastal town. Not a very tricky mystery as mysteries go, but a fun adventure filled with friendly monsters make for an entertaining story.… (meer)

All in all an entertaining read.
One thing rubbed me the wrong way though.
The book goes pretty much all in on regency England.
It has a quirky writing style and word choice, all of which emphasize the time period and its stuck-up and conceited nobility.
And all this is great and I found it very enjoyable, but it clashes badly with how little subtlety the story has in communicating concepts like female empowerment and inner beauty and all that crap. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the general ideas but it's done in such a prescriptive and preachy way.

The writing seems inspired by Jane Austin's writing but without any of the subtlety and dry wit which makes her writing so ingenious.
Where Jane Austin is a delicate touch of a feather, this book is a brick to the face.

I don't want to end on a negative note but I don't have more to say.
I don't regret having read it. It was much better than I expected.… (meer)

While Lord Wycliff investigates a monster terrorising the residents in Chelsea, Hannah Miles tries to discover the owner of a mischievous hand with a mind of its own.

Following on from the events in Manners and Monsters, readers encounter the same mix of horror and humour in a novel of manners, with the rather independent hand providing some light relief among the killings and experimentation on the dead. However, the pace was more uneven than in its predecessor, and I got the distinct impression that the thread involving the hand was acting as a filler, because not much else was happening. However, there is an unexpected plot twist fairly early on in the novel that will have repercussions for the rest of the series, I imagine, and it will be interesting to see how this will be resolved.… (meer)