Thank you, Netgalley, for the ARC of this book! I’m in a virtual book group and we were all so excited to get our hands on the newest installment of the Amory Ames series by Ashley Weaver. Deception at Thornecrest comes out on September 8, 2020, and I think that readers will really enjoy it.
Amory Ames and her husband, Milo, have retreated to Milo’s family home to await the arrival of their firstborn baby. Amory is eight months along, and she’s getting restless as her due date gets closer. However, Amory can’t stay out of intrigue for long, as we’ve seen from her other adventures. Soon, a woman appears on her doorstep claiming to be Milo’s wife, and another unwanted guest soon follows. You’d think that would be enough drama for her heavily-pregnant self, but when a local boy is found dead during the summer festival, she can’t resist getting involved in the investigation.
It was nice to see Amory back in an English setting instead of the US (in her last novel); I feel like she fits in a lot better in England. It’s also interesting to see her interact with the people in Milo’s native village as they’ve known him since birth. Because he’s developed a less-than-golden reputation, the residents seem to judge Amory on another level, as if they can’t believe she’s still married to him. However, they are proper English villagers and only speculate when she can’t hear them. I think all of Amory’s mysteries so far have centered around her society friends, so it’s good to see her interact with the “common” folk in this one.
In comparison to a lot of detecting couples (Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch, Sebastian and Hero Devlin, Lady Emily Ashton and Colin Hargreaves, Lady Darby and Sebastian Gage, etc.), who share a lot of their feelings and are deeply in love with each other, Milo and Amory tiptoe around each other due to the relatively uncertain nature of their relationship. It adds a really authentic dynamic to the novel, as their reticence seems reasonable for people who don’t know what to say to each other. It seems like a very challenging marriage to be a part of, but they’ve gone from almost splitting up in the first book to having a baby in this most recent one, so they are moving in a more comfortable direction with each other. It’s also nice to see a softer side of Milo as he thinks about the baby and makes sure than Amory is in good condition.
I did really like the plot of this novel; there were a lot of factors that weren’t strictly related, but could have been if the pieces were strung together correctly; it really kept me guessing as to how they fit. There were enough suspicious happenings to produce a lot of red herrings, but nothing concrete enough for readers to guess the plot.
As this novel was fairly split between the Ames’ family drama and the investigation, we receive a lot of musings on pregnancy and the baby from Amory. I found this totally believable and reasonable as it would be very much on her mind. I don’t think she overwhelms readers with her excitement. One of the most interesting aspects of this novel was the attitude that the public has towards Amory’s pregnancy. Most people she encountered couldn’t refer directly to it, and would be embarrassed if they noticed it. It’s a stark contrast to today where maternity photo shoots are very popular and there are maternity styles that highlight “the bump.” It leaves me wondering when it became acceptable to talk about or acknowledge a pregnancy directly and what prompted that societal change.
While Amory does speak on her feelings about becoming a mother, she’s less forthcoming about other issues in her life in this book. She’s very logical, which makes her a good investigator, but she is more emotionally distant towards Milo in this novel; she doesn’t ask him or push him to work on their relationship as much as she has in the past. All-in-all, this was a fine read. I always enjoy Amory and Milo, and their tenuous relationship is not one I envy, but it does make for some interesting reading. It makes them more real as characters, and I can appreciate that. I think my favorite Amory Ames novel is still An Act of Villainy, but I definitely remained clueless until the end with A Deception at Thornecrest and was quite impressed that Amory figured it out.