Review: Hilarious New Voice in Regency Romance
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 3, 2013
I'm a skeptic. I'm especially skeptical when a self-published author garners so many 5-star reviews, especially for a first work. I universally assume that every friend who owes them a favor, every shirttail relative who can type on a keyboard, everybody who thinks it's important to support writers, even if they aren't very good, yet (or ever)~~in other words,  everyone the author can convince to post a review~~has done so, doing no favor to the reading community at large in the process.Well, in this case, I am absolutely wrong. This is a wonderfully written book. Miranda Davis is nothing short of hilarious, her characters smart and believable, the storyline unique. I am already watching Amazon for the next book in this, The Horsemen of the Apocalypse series.Prudence the Apothecary lives in Bath. As a girl, she was accosted by the Duke of Ainsworth, then essentially exiled to Bath by her insufferable brother and his even more insufferable wife. And it is from Bath that she plots revenge on the duke~~for about ten years. At last, with the help of her two servants, she abducts, drugs, and then tattoos the dastardly man. Only problem is, it's the wrong dastard, the original having cocked up his toes. Needless to say, his younger brother, the new duke, is less than smitten with the ink job. So he plots revenge of his own, beginning first with discovering just who the tantalizing nymph is who vaguely populates his every dream.From one mishap to another, Miranda Davis spins a misanthropic tale of love gone wrong, or right, or sometimes sideways. Her dialogue is terrific, her sarcastic wit sometimes utterly brilliant. She paints Prudence as a woman used to making her own way, whose own family has turned from her and whose ability to trust has been sorely affected, and likewise, she uses a deft hand to draw Jem, the duke, as a man able to face any physical danger~~any horror~~with icy calm, but who cannot express his love to the woman who holds his heart. The combination makes for a frisky plot, and the author's clear love and knowledge of the period only improves the reader's experience (and possibly the reader). The ancillary characters she has developed here are as nutty and noteworthy as the mains, and as a self-proclaimed nutjob, myself, I look forward with great anticipation to the next installment in this series where surely this crew will appear again.