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cgroup6's review against another edition
4.0
Overall - an entertaining story. Great start to a series with a lot of character building.
amyextradot's review
5.0
Boyce shows a grittier and "more real" side to the Regency period by focusing on a group of non-titled men (and the women they lurve) whom call themselves The Honorables.
This first installment, focusing on Dr. Brandon Dewhurst, shows the underbelly of the resurrectionist business--the men who robbed graves in order to supply anatomists with bodies to further their research.
Like Boyce's last series (the Once a... series) there is amazingly lush descriptions of the surroundings, clothing, and mannerisms of the time. And, like the previous series, there is some super-hot sex scenes. But this time around, there's more emotional pull (at least for me) and I found myself crying--tears of "oh my gosh!!!"; tears of "that is so sad!!"; tears of "sooooo sweet!!!"
So, romance lovers--read this book, you won't regret it.
You might regret the time it takes for Ms. Boyce to get the next book published. I'm hoping it's Henry!
This first installment, focusing on Dr. Brandon Dewhurst, shows the underbelly of the resurrectionist business--the men who robbed graves in order to supply anatomists with bodies to further their research.
Like Boyce's last series (the Once a... series) there is amazingly lush descriptions of the surroundings, clothing, and mannerisms of the time. And, like the previous series, there is some super-hot sex scenes. But this time around, there's more emotional pull (at least for me) and I found myself crying--tears of "oh my gosh!!!"; tears of "that is so sad!!"; tears of "sooooo sweet!!!"
So, romance lovers--read this book, you won't regret it.
You might regret the time it takes for Ms. Boyce to get the next book published. I'm hoping it's Henry!
breccan's review
5.0
Ooh a fascinating topic, a fast paced caper, and some HAWT steamy action between the two main characters kept me turning the pages late into the night. I dropped two best-sellers to the side of my bed when I got a hold of Honor Among Thieves and I wasn't disappointed.
I cannot wait to know which of The Honorables we'll get to read about next. I don't know why but I'm predicting Henry. Write like the wind Ms. Boyce, write like the wind!!!
I cannot wait to know which of The Honorables we'll get to read about next. I don't know why but I'm predicting Henry. Write like the wind Ms. Boyce, write like the wind!!!
chopeclark's review
5.0
Elizabeth Boyce astounds me with her wordsmithing, and I read everything she writes. So when is a romance more than a romance? When it's suspenseful, ripe with three-dimensional characters, and a creepy, heinous antagonist the reader doesn't see coming. Throw in grave-robbing and a desperate protagonist and you have a story that crosses genres, capturing the best of all. I know a story is good when I look forward to sliding into bed each night to return to where I left off the night before. This story opens with a remarkable chapter that truly sets the stage, and the story just escalates and blooms from there. There's mystery and sensuality, historical accuracy and twists. All in all, my kind of read.
jaclynder's review
3.0
Honor Among Thieves is an unusual historical romance, one that's in the same vein as Brenda Novak’s A Matter of Grave Concern. The heroine in Honor Among Thieves reluctantly joins a group of resurrection men when her elder brother leaves her family in steep debt. In order to repay these loans, Lorna Robbins needs ready cash yesterday. Due to her higher social station she can gain information and access to corpses that most resurrection men cannot. Before long, Lorna and her band of men are snagging all the best corpses in London. Unfortunately, this success brings suspicion, making it more difficult to keep her secret life as Blackbird separate from her life as Lorna Robbins.
Complicating matters is Brandon Dewhurst, a younger son who became a surgeon. At the behest of his mentor, Brandon has been purchasing specimens from resurrection men to further the study of pregnancy. This is certainly not a job Brandon relishes, but he is aware of the advancements that this research could bring to women. The only trouble is that Brandon’s supply has diminished because of the success of the mysterious Blackbird and her gang of men.
When Brandon and Lorna meet, sparks fly; however, their romance is put on hold with Lorna’s secrets. It’s hard to romance a girl, when she’s off stealing bodies (and when you have no idea that this is what she's doing in her spare time).
In all honestly, I feel on the fence about Honor Among Thieves. There were elements that I liked, and there were elements that I thought were not so good. What I liked about this one was the uniqueness of the storyline. In most historical romances the leads are well-to-do or there’s a Cinderella story element to it. This is not the case here. Lorna is deeply in debt and Brandon is a simple surgeon. Yes, he’s got a stable income, but he’s not rolling in the dough. Brandon is not riding in on a white horse and saving Lorna by covering the cost of her debt. This setup is great; I like that these characters had more of a “working class” feel to them. They were still part of the upper crust, but they had much more to worry about than ton gossip.
I also liked the focus on resurrection man. After reading the disappointing A Matter of Grave Concern, I was intrigued by those that stole bodies for science. The immediate, visceral reaction to this is that it is repellent and wrong; however, in Honor Among Thieves, I thought the motivation was explained, and explained well. The abhorrent act of stealing someone's body is for the greater good. Without these corpses to study, surgeons would have no understanding of how the human body works or how to save lives. Getting the surgeon's perspective on this issue was great and necessary considering this was the heroine's "job".
What I was not a fan of here was the sensationalism that continued to crop up. The last third of the book really went over-the-top with it's villain and violence. The villain was introduced late, and his actions towards women, seemed to come from nowhere and seemed to be added for shock value rather than for the sake of the plot. The grave robber Slee seemed to hate women, but the violence that was shown here felt out of place after reading the first two thirds of the book.
I also felt that there could have been greater development of the main characters. Lorna and Brandon were interesting and unique characters in the realm of historical romance and I would have loved for that to have been explored more. It was continually stated that they both had baggage, but I never really got the sense that their past experiences influenced their present actions.
The romance itself was fairly tame, and although I did feel that it was grounded in an instant attraction, I think the author did a good job of showing how this connection grew as these characters got to know one another. Personally, I would have liked to have spent a little more time with the characters after Lorna’s secrets were revealed, but it did resolve itself nicely.
Ultimately, Honor Among Thieves was a solid read in the historical romance genre and I appreciate the fact that this was a departure from the normal historical setting. If you can get past the over-the-top villain, I think readers will find the uniqueness of the plot interesting and refreshing.
Originally published with similar reads at The Book Adventures.
*Review copy provided by the publisher via Edelweiss.
Complicating matters is Brandon Dewhurst, a younger son who became a surgeon. At the behest of his mentor, Brandon has been purchasing specimens from resurrection men to further the study of pregnancy. This is certainly not a job Brandon relishes, but he is aware of the advancements that this research could bring to women. The only trouble is that Brandon’s supply has diminished because of the success of the mysterious Blackbird and her gang of men.
When Brandon and Lorna meet, sparks fly; however, their romance is put on hold with Lorna’s secrets. It’s hard to romance a girl, when she’s off stealing bodies (and when you have no idea that this is what she's doing in her spare time).
In all honestly, I feel on the fence about Honor Among Thieves. There were elements that I liked, and there were elements that I thought were not so good. What I liked about this one was the uniqueness of the storyline. In most historical romances the leads are well-to-do or there’s a Cinderella story element to it. This is not the case here. Lorna is deeply in debt and Brandon is a simple surgeon. Yes, he’s got a stable income, but he’s not rolling in the dough. Brandon is not riding in on a white horse and saving Lorna by covering the cost of her debt. This setup is great; I like that these characters had more of a “working class” feel to them. They were still part of the upper crust, but they had much more to worry about than ton gossip.
I also liked the focus on resurrection man. After reading the disappointing A Matter of Grave Concern, I was intrigued by those that stole bodies for science. The immediate, visceral reaction to this is that it is repellent and wrong; however, in Honor Among Thieves, I thought the motivation was explained, and explained well. The abhorrent act of stealing someone's body is for the greater good. Without these corpses to study, surgeons would have no understanding of how the human body works or how to save lives. Getting the surgeon's perspective on this issue was great and necessary considering this was the heroine's "job".
What I was not a fan of here was the sensationalism that continued to crop up. The last third of the book really went over-the-top with it's villain and violence. The villain was introduced late, and his actions towards women, seemed to come from nowhere and seemed to be added for shock value rather than for the sake of the plot. The grave robber Slee seemed to hate women, but the violence that was shown here felt out of place after reading the first two thirds of the book.
I also felt that there could have been greater development of the main characters. Lorna and Brandon were interesting and unique characters in the realm of historical romance and I would have loved for that to have been explored more. It was continually stated that they both had baggage, but I never really got the sense that their past experiences influenced their present actions.
The romance itself was fairly tame, and although I did feel that it was grounded in an instant attraction, I think the author did a good job of showing how this connection grew as these characters got to know one another. Personally, I would have liked to have spent a little more time with the characters after Lorna’s secrets were revealed, but it did resolve itself nicely.
Ultimately, Honor Among Thieves was a solid read in the historical romance genre and I appreciate the fact that this was a departure from the normal historical setting. If you can get past the over-the-top villain, I think readers will find the uniqueness of the plot interesting and refreshing.
Originally published with similar reads at The Book Adventures.
*Review copy provided by the publisher via Edelweiss.
lucyhargrave's review
5.0
Full review on my blog which can be found at http://bit.ly/1qKuiSE
I know this is a book that will stay with me long after I finished reading it. The writing, the character development and the plot were all superb but these are not the main reasons why this book will stick in my memory. It was the world that Elizabeth Boyce chose as her setting for Honor Among Thieves, the underbelly or dark-side to Edwardian medical advances.
Set in 1816 this book exposes the reader to the familiar world of the ton in only brief glimpses; it isn’t a historical romance about ballroom dances, dashing dukes and blushing debutantes. Instead, from the very first chapter the reader is shown a world were morality becomes a decidedly grey area with both Brandon and Lorna being drawn further and further into the seedy world of Edwardian grave robbing.
“He lived amongst the dead and fought to save the dying. He had seen men’s intestines spill from their bellies and had sawed off limbs without flinching while his patients screamed. There was little left in the surgical world that bothered him, but the pregnant ones got him every time”
I loved reading about this world with its gruesome and realistic portrayals of resurrectionists in the early eighteen-hundreds, a world that Elizabeth Boyce doesn't shy away from describing...
I know this is a book that will stay with me long after I finished reading it. The writing, the character development and the plot were all superb but these are not the main reasons why this book will stick in my memory. It was the world that Elizabeth Boyce chose as her setting for Honor Among Thieves, the underbelly or dark-side to Edwardian medical advances.
Set in 1816 this book exposes the reader to the familiar world of the ton in only brief glimpses; it isn’t a historical romance about ballroom dances, dashing dukes and blushing debutantes. Instead, from the very first chapter the reader is shown a world were morality becomes a decidedly grey area with both Brandon and Lorna being drawn further and further into the seedy world of Edwardian grave robbing.
“He lived amongst the dead and fought to save the dying. He had seen men’s intestines spill from their bellies and had sawed off limbs without flinching while his patients screamed. There was little left in the surgical world that bothered him, but the pregnant ones got him every time”
I loved reading about this world with its gruesome and realistic portrayals of resurrectionists in the early eighteen-hundreds, a world that Elizabeth Boyce doesn't shy away from describing...
book_grinch's review against another edition
3.0
Arc provided by Crimson Romance through Edelweiss
Release Date: October 27 th
TW's: Attempted Rape
I'm thirty five years old, and I have been reading practically all my life.
This means that I've read quite a good number of books so far...and hopefully _ o_O _ I'll be able to read many more.
This said, I must start by saying that I have the inkling, that had I read this story a couple years ago, I would probably had loved it! The intensity, the drama of it, oh, I would have probably devoured it!
o_O
But as things are now, I am afraid that this rating is more due to the story's merit in some aspects, instead of my actual appreciation of it.
This story for all the information that it gives us about how medicine was seen, and everything it involved two centuries ago, doesn't deserve a two star rating (a simple okay), but in the end I have to admit that I didn't like this.
It has some strong points:
_The originality of the plot;
_ The characters that start as originals...
_The "Honourables" concept..
_The fact that I learned more about the period in which the story takes places, than I have while reading I don't know how many dozens of historical romances...
But then something happens: In some vital moments, that should have been seen _like the moment in which Lorna decides to join the grave robbing gang_, the narrative stops, leaving us to wonder what happened to the characters.
When the narrative once again starts, we are told what has happened!
Since the story develops itself around this "event", I really disliked that I didn't get to see it.
Unfortunately, it is not an isolated event.
The romance
For me, this ended up being the problem with the story: Honestly, I wanted more of the grave digging business, _ o_O _ instead of the same old "speedy" romances in which the characters fall immediately in lust with one another, and can't start ripping each other clothes!
I am not saying that it didn't had some good or even funny moments, like the "rat throwing", and the "disaster with the dress" moments, but I really didn't understand why Lorna would become such an interesting figure in the town.
In fact, with the "dress incident" happening, I would think the inverse would happen....but I don't know practically nothing about the period. So...
But what really made impossible for me to enjoy this story, were the two attempted rapes that happen in a quick succession of time.
I really would appreciate _ as I think many other readers would _ of being warned about this type of thing before requesting arcs, or buying books.
Honestly, had I known about it, I wouldn't have requested it.
Because in the end _for me _ the story ends up feeling like those historical romances in which the female characters were constantly in danger of being raped :/
For me this could (should ) have been skipped.
The story already had a pretty heavy dose of drama happening,_ how does one even mentions a dialogue involving a very pregnant woman and people telling her that she is probably going to die, and people are going to rob her body? _ it really didn't need those descriptions happening.
It was too much, and it ended up vulgarizing an original idea.
Bottom Line: A great concept and good writing. Unfortunately in the end _for me _ it ended up falling short of all its potential.
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