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A review by alassel
The Madness of Lord Westfall by Mia Marlowe
3.0
I enjoyed the first book in this series so I picked up the second one a week later or so. The main character in this one is the man who hears thoughts, Pierce Langdon aka Lord Westfall, who obtained this ability when he fell out of a tree at age nine. His relatives shut him up in Bedlam for years, until he was rescued by the man in charge of M.U.S.E., who then helps him to control his "curse" and puts him back into Society. This is where he meets Nora Claremont, a fallen daughter of the ton whose love match got her disowned by her lordly father, and now that she is a widow she makes her living as a highly esteemed courtesan. Of course these two come together as Pierce is looking for another object in service to M.U.S.E., and needs Nora's help.
The characters in this book were well done and very adult, with a minimum of "I can't possibly tell you this" that I find so annoying nowadays. I particularly liked the complexity of the relationship between Nora and her current paramour, with a much more realistic look at his situation in light of the time when this book is set. Both of our leads are complex and reveal their pasts in more detail, and both eventually overcome their issues and find bravery in order to solve the puzzle, recover the item, and end up together.
Overall, this was another fun entry that was well done, and initially I'd rank it a high 3 stars rounded up to 4. However, I found the "country house" scenes to be almost a duplicate of the ones in the first novel, which turned out to be rather boring instead of interesting or adding to the story, more of a "we must have a country house escapade, yes?" sort of thing than something that added to the plot. My final rating is thus a low 3 star, rounded to 3 overall.
The characters in this book were well done and very adult, with a minimum of "I can't possibly tell you this" that I find so annoying nowadays. I particularly liked the complexity of the relationship between Nora and her current paramour, with a much more realistic look at his situation in light of the time when this book is set. Both of our leads are complex and reveal their pasts in more detail, and both eventually overcome their issues and find bravery in order to solve the puzzle, recover the item, and end up together.
Overall, this was another fun entry that was well done, and initially I'd rank it a high 3 stars rounded up to 4. However, I found the "country house" scenes to be almost a duplicate of the ones in the first novel, which turned out to be rather boring instead of interesting or adding to the story, more of a "we must have a country house escapade, yes?" sort of thing than something that added to the plot. My final rating is thus a low 3 star, rounded to 3 overall.