This was a quick fun read. 26 yr old Plain Jane, Beatrice, living with her aunt, uncle and two cousins since her parents died when she was 5, and has no prospects of a good matrimonial match attends a country house party and a murder occurs. Bea, late at night goes to the library looking for something to read and stumbles over Mr Otley's body and also meets the Duke of Kesgrave there. They are suspicious of each other but team up to invesitgate. Lots of humorous dialog. Looking forward to the future when they realize they're meant for each other. ( )

This Regency cozy mystery surprised me a lot. While I find that Regency romances and mysteries are usually "much of a muchness," without much to really distinguish one from another, the witty banter in this one took it to the next level for me.
Beatrice is a 26-year-old spinster who lives with her aunt and two cousins. They are all making a visit to family friends. Late one night Beatrice can't sleep, so, as anyone would, she heads off to the library for a suitable book. While there she stumbles upon A BODY (gasp!) AND who else should be standing over it but the Duke of Kesgrave, the one member of the house party that she absolutely despises, and always wants to throw food at.
Beatrice is a shy, uncomfortable sort of girl in society, but this unexpected turn of events leads her to doing things she would never have dreamt of in the pursuit of justice. I enjoyed her blossoming personality. And I really enjoyed the standoffs between her and Kesgrave. This is a very funny book that had me chuckling more than usual.
Not that it's without its flaws. Scenes of dialogue tend to stall while too much time is being spent narrating Beatrice's thoughts, and it seems that whoever she's talking to is just silently standing around while she ponders things. A bit unnatural. But a forgivable flaw in such a funny book with characters that I really want to revisit.
I am happy to note that two more books in the series were released at the same time as this one, so I will be able to continue Beatrice's adventures without delay.

Thanks to NetGalley and Potatoworks Press for this advance review copy. ( )

Poor orphan twenty-six year old Beatrice Hyde-Clare is invited along with her aunt and cousins to a house party at Lakeview hall in the Lake District. The home of Lord Skeffington and his family. The pedantic, condescending Damien Matlock, Duke of Kesgrave evokes her ire. But is he the killer when she discovers him towering over a dead body. She decides to investigate.
An enjoyable fun read, a well-written Regency murder mystery with main characters which do grow on you as the story unfolds.
A NetGalley Book ( )

I read this light-hearted Regency whodunnit as it was said to be set in the Lake District, where I am currently on holiday. While it is nominally set there, the setting is barely mentioned and completely immaterial to the narrative, which takes place entirely within the house and grounds of the aristocratic Skeffingtons. Our heroine Beatrice Hyde-Clare is an idiosyncratic young lady who has been orphaned and brought up by her conventional and socially pretentious Aunt Vera. After she stumbles on a dead body in the library in the middle of the night, she attempts to solve the mystery with the grudging co-operation of the overbearing Duke of Kesgrave. There is a complicated series of motives and back stories, of course. While I was slightly disappointed that the Lake District did not in fact feature at all in the story, this was an amusing and light-hearted read, with the verbal sparring between Beatrice and the Duke causing some laugh out loud moments. So I may well at some point pursue this series (despite the occasional irritating and jarring Americanism). ( )

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries. Right now there are eight books in this series, with another expected to be published later in 2021. I got this as an audiobook from Audible.com.

Audiobook Quality (4/5): The narration here was fine. Smith does a good job with character voices and is pleasant to listen to.

Story (2/5): I got about 40% through this and then returned the audiobook. This was just flat out boring, maybe I am just not a cozy mystery fan. I honestly don't care who killed the man in the library with a candlestick because I kind of wish whoever did it would have continued his/her murder spree on the rest of the insipient characters in this novel...I did not like this.

Characters (2/5): I actively and intensely disliked the characters in this book. I really disliked how much our heroine is constantly down on herself and how she is treated by the people around her. Additionally, the male lead is pretty much a jerk and constantly insults Beatrice. I think all of this insulting is supposed to come off as cute or funny, but it ended up being more nauseating to me.

Setting (2/5): The setting was a generic regency type of setting. We barely even leave the house with Beatrice, I would have liked to see more of the area Beatrice lived in.

Writing Style (2/5): This took so long to get moving and was so very boring. I thought how awful everyone was to Beatrice all the time was...well...just awful. I didn’t enjoy anything about this book aside from the narrator’s generically pleasant English voice. On a side note I continue to be very pleased that Audible will let you return unfinished audiobooks because I was pretty sad to have spent a credit on this one.

My Summary (2/5): Overall this was not for me, not even a little bit. I thought this was going to be a cute little historical mystery set in the Victorian time frame. It ended up being a boring exercise in watching Beatrice get verbally beat up by everyone around while the reader is supposed to think that it’s cute. As mentioned above, I intensely disliked the characters and the plot was too slow to make up for any of this. I will not be reading future books in the series. ( )