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jillmlong's review against another edition
3.0
This was a well written book. Since it is the 4th book in the series and I hadn't read the previous books, at times I felt I was missing something. I now plan on reading the first 3 books because I enjoyed reading about Rosalind.
miraeli's review against another edition
3.0
The second half of A Lady Compromised was better than the first half, where Wilde purposely sidelines Rosalind in order to show that she doesn't quite fit in with the setting. Because of this sidelining, the POV switches multiple times in several chapters, causing Rosalind to feel like a secondary player in her own story. This gets resolved almost half way through and things go better from there, but the first half was a struggle to get through.
A lot of characters are involved in the mystery of A Lady Compromised, to the point where I had trouble keeping track of a few and their relation to each other. It felt a little too spread out, and while I realize you need multiple red herrings for your mystery novel, something about the number of characters here was just a bit too much. Wilde brings up a lot of different moving parts and doesn't quite successfully juggle all of them.For instance, there's one point where Devon's mother implies that Devon killed his brother to Rosalind, and in Rosalind's next chapter, when she sees Devon, she makes no internal mention of it at all. Why bring that up and then not even have Rosalind make a small mention of it immediately afterward? Maybe it was to show that she trusted Devon too much to buy into his mother's suspicion, but it still seemed odd.
I also question the resolution of the mystery. It felt too neat.Devon had the coroner falsify the death record by saying the victim died by accident, when Devon believes he died by suicide, to save the family the grief. This isn't brought up in the rushed final chapter which details the trial. Was it not brought up? Did the coroner stick to the accident story when that would have put his reputation on the line? There's no mention of it at all in the end, so I suppose it was just ignored.
Still, I enjoy the way Wilde is able to incorporate all the little details of manners that everyone has to follow in high society and never make it seem like an info-dump or have it slow down the pace of a scene. I always feel a little constrained when I read these books because Wilde is great at showing how constrained life was for everyone, but especially women, in Regency England. I still love the characters in this novel, and I still adore this series. A Lady Compromised simply wasn't my favorite of the series.
See more of my reviews at Red Hat Cat Reviews!
A lot of characters are involved in the mystery of A Lady Compromised, to the point where I had trouble keeping track of a few and their relation to each other. It felt a little too spread out, and while I realize you need multiple red herrings for your mystery novel, something about the number of characters here was just a bit too much. Wilde brings up a lot of different moving parts and doesn't quite successfully juggle all of them.
I also question the resolution of the mystery. It felt too neat.
Still, I enjoy the way Wilde is able to incorporate all the little details of manners that everyone has to follow in high society and never make it seem like an info-dump or have it slow down the pace of a scene. I always feel a little constrained when I read these books because Wilde is great at showing how constrained life was for everyone, but especially women, in Regency England. I still love the characters in this novel, and I still adore this series. A Lady Compromised simply wasn't my favorite of the series.
See more of my reviews at Red Hat Cat Reviews!
ckanderson's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars! I really enjoy this series. The mysteries are good with an ending that surprises me, but it feels like the real point of the narrative isn't so much the mystery but Rosalind's growth and how she handles all of the complex situations. It was also nice to have some measure of resolution to the love triangle. I look forward to the next one!
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