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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
I enjoyed the latest in this series. I like Maisie--she's a bit OCPD in her ways--quirky and complex, and sometimes a bit annoying.
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I have very mixed feelings about this book and where this journey has taken Maisie. I thoroughly enjoy Jacqueline Winspear's writing and her ability to tell a story. These stories move quickly and they are easily read in a couple of sittings. The historical detail is excellent and I always feel like I have been swept back in time to one of the eras that I am most interested in. The mysteries that Maisie unravels are compelling and usually offer plenty of twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. Maisie has always been a very strong character--fiercely independent, intelligent and intuitive, caring and discerning. BUT she has also been annoying the heck out of me over the last several books. James Compton is the most long-suffering man I've met in detective fiction. I thought Lord Peter Wimsey went to great lengths to wait for Harriet Vane to come around....but he's got nothing on James. And, I fear, that Wimsey's wait will wind up having been far more satisfying both for him and for readers than Compton's will be. I have, unfortunately, run into a few spoilers about what lies ahead for James and Maisie--and I can't say that I care for what I've found.
Putting those spoiler rumors aside for a moment, I just honestly have difficulty with the amount of upheaval that goes on in Maisie's life--constantly. It's as if we cannot possibly allow her to be happy for more than five minutes. She lost her first love due to the war and its after-effects. She has since lost her mentor. There have been various difficulties for Billy, her right-hand-man, and he's going to be leaving the agency for another job. At the end of the book, James is off to Canada and Maisie will be closing the agency and heading to India on a trip to find herself and, as the book's title says, leave behind everything she loves. Maisie is a complex character. It would be nice to see her work through some of those complications and still manage to have some stability. Finding a way to have a satisfying committed relationship with James AND manage to keep her independence and complex character as well maintain her professional practice would offer plenty of backstory tension and drama without taking everything away from Maisie.
★★★ for a solid entry into this series. A good story overall with a compelling mystery which revolves around events from the past which bring about the tragic deaths of the two Indian women. The star deduction comes entirely from my dissatisfaction with Maisie's overarching story line as the series continues. I will most likely read the next book--but I hope the spoiler rumors are untrue....
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My thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in the Month of Maisie Readalong and providing a copy of this book for my honest review. I have received no compensation whatsoever for my participation in this blog tour. Full tour post may be found at my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
Putting those spoiler rumors aside for a moment, I just honestly have difficulty with the amount of upheaval that goes on in Maisie's life--constantly. It's as if we cannot possibly allow her to be happy for more than five minutes. She lost her first love due to the war and its after-effects. She has since lost her mentor. There have been various difficulties for Billy, her right-hand-man, and he's going to be leaving the agency for another job. At the end of the book, James is off to Canada and Maisie will be closing the agency and heading to India on a trip to find herself and, as the book's title says, leave behind everything she loves. Maisie is a complex character. It would be nice to see her work through some of those complications and still manage to have some stability. Finding a way to have a satisfying committed relationship with James AND manage to keep her independence and complex character as well maintain her professional practice would offer plenty of backstory tension and drama without taking everything away from Maisie.
★★★ for a solid entry into this series. A good story overall with a compelling mystery which revolves around events from the past which bring about the tragic deaths of the two Indian women. The star deduction comes entirely from my dissatisfaction with Maisie's overarching story line as the series continues. I will most likely read the next book--but I hope the spoiler rumors are untrue....
********
My thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in the Month of Maisie Readalong and providing a copy of this book for my honest review. I have received no compensation whatsoever for my participation in this blog tour. Full tour post may be found at my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
Very nice detective novel on murders of two Indian women in post-WWI London. The initial assumption is that the murders have something to do with racism. In the end, they had to do with the effects of WWI on the returning combat soldiers. A bit too romantic for me, I suppose.
I liked this, but I felt the big gap in the series between the first one (which I had finished the previous day) and this one. The mystery is good and deals with some interesting issues and Maisie continues to be compelling, but I think I was missing out on quite a lot having missed out on the 8 books between this and the first. But it was from the library, and we can't always chose which order we get series in. I'll still be looking for more Maisie Dobbs books.
http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2013/03/2013-book-80.html
Maisie Dobbs is finding that inheriting property and great wealth is not the boon that others would imagine. She still finds herself conflicted between her humble upbringing, the daughter of a servant who was herself a maid, through her education which led her to her current profession of detective and psychologist, and her inheritance which has led her to mix with the aristocracy and a relationship with James Compson, the son of her former employers. James is keen to marry Maisie but something is preventing her from accepting her proposal, although it doesn't stop them from being lovers and living together in his mansion, although she maintains her own, less glamorous, apartment. Maisie is also conflicted because James is involved with a man who is developing fighter planes for the war against Hitler which they fear is inevitable, while Maisie applauds their patriotism, he is also responsible for the deaths of at least two men who died to protect his secrets, something which Maisie can't forgive. Added to which, Maisie's trusty sidekick Billy is not recovering from his previous beating and is not performing his job as usual.
Maisie is approached by an Indian man, a former soldier in WW1, whose sister Usha was shot two months earlier. Although highly educated, and brought to England to act as a governess to an English family, Usha has been living in a house for Indian servants who have been let go by their English employers and working as a daily maid to earn her keep. While investigating Usha's murder Maisie must also take on one of Billy's cases which he has let slip, involving the disappearance of a teenage boy.
This read very much like the final book in a series, there were (endless) recaps of Maisie's career to-date, her love life, her inheritance, her service during the war etc. Also, with her pondering over travelling to India and the situation with Billy and James it really feels like the end of an era (although of course I know there are several more books - by popular demand or did Jacqueline Winspear change publishers?). So much so, that the mystery seems a bit of an afterthought, and I'm still not entirely sure why Usha's friend was also killed or even if it was the same killer. Anyway, I have moaned about how every book in this series seems to relate to WW1 (except the last one) and when it doesn't I'm still not happy!
Maisie is approached by an Indian man, a former soldier in WW1, whose sister Usha was shot two months earlier. Although highly educated, and brought to England to act as a governess to an English family, Usha has been living in a house for Indian servants who have been let go by their English employers and working as a daily maid to earn her keep. While investigating Usha's murder Maisie must also take on one of Billy's cases which he has let slip, involving the disappearance of a teenage boy.
This read very much like the final book in a series, there were (endless) recaps of Maisie's career to-date, her love life, her inheritance, her service during the war etc. Also, with her pondering over travelling to India and the situation with Billy and James it really feels like the end of an era (although of course I know there are several more books - by popular demand or did Jacqueline Winspear change publishers?). So much so, that the mystery seems a bit of an afterthought, and I'm still not entirely sure why Usha's friend was also killed or even if it was the same killer. Anyway, I have moaned about how every book in this series seems to relate to WW1 (except the last one) and when it doesn't I'm still not happy!
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This is probably the Maisie Dobbs novel that took me the longest to read. Each time I put it down I wanted to DNF. But I have come so far in this series that I wanted to give it a chance. This book felt like the last season of GOT. Maisie has a different personality than she has in past books, Billy is only used as a plot device to get Maisie out of a bad situation, and the whole thing felt like Winspear wrote only for her contract and doesn’t want to continue the series.
As far as the mystery goes, it’s a decent mystery and I did enjoy that aspect and it lives up to what you would have come to expect from Winspear. Of course, the meat of the story is about the characters themselves. Which I did not enjoy in this volume. Maisie suddenly became more radical, outspoken, and rude. Add in the excessive use of “Indian summer” and how we went from never hearing about Indian people within the community to Maisie being an expert and seeing them everywhere. The novel was frustrating where the internal conflict and relationships were concerned. I will be reading the next book, but if this is an example of the next “season” of Maisie, I will be discontinuing.
As far as the mystery goes, it’s a decent mystery and I did enjoy that aspect and it lives up to what you would have come to expect from Winspear. Of course, the meat of the story is about the characters themselves. Which I did not enjoy in this volume. Maisie suddenly became more radical, outspoken, and rude. Add in the excessive use of “Indian summer” and how we went from never hearing about Indian people within the community to Maisie being an expert and seeing them everywhere. The novel was frustrating where the internal conflict and relationships were concerned. I will be reading the next book, but if this is an example of the next “season” of Maisie, I will be discontinuing.
Content Warnings
Minor: Child abuse
A lot of the conflicts that have been brewing in Maisie’s personal life come to the fore in this book. If I didn’t already know that there are more books, it could have been a potential series ended, like Buffy Season 5. I think this series is about to take a major turn, and I may not like all the places it goes, but Ms. Winspear managed to put paid on a lot of story lines while sending Maisie off on an adventure, as we inch closer to World War II and some big heavy choices Maisie has yet to make. This was a great transition book, while Maisie does what she does best and we get pulled farther into the morass of the period between the Wars. It ended on not quite a cliffhanger, but with enough suspense that I am really curious what happens next.
Another wonderful Maisie Dobbs book! I really enjoyed this one because the author is changing things up. She's not afraid to depart from the usual formula of the other books in the series. This book opens the door to change in Maisie's future, I'm looking forward to seeing what experiences Maisie has in the next book.