In the latest installment of the Lady and Lady\u2019s Maid mystery series by Alyssa Maxwell, Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her maid Eva Huntford are enthusiastic about opening the Renshaw family estate for tours. However, the rest of the Renshaw family has some misgivings, which are soon realized beyond their expectations when a tour guest is found strangled in their library. It\u2019s not exactly an auspicious start to their tours, and soon Phoebe and Eva are embroiled in finding the right culprit to the crime, despite the \u201cinterference\u201d of the local, bumbling police inspector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lady and Lady\u2019s Maid series are lighthearted and cozy reads. The plots are usually pretty solid, although I did guess the culprit towards the end of this one. Along with Phoebe\u2019s story, which lately has been focused on her investigative prowess, readers follow her sister Julia as well. Her story has been drama-filled enough to make readers forget that Phoebe, Eva, and Amelia (the other Renshaw sister) haven\u2019t had much going on for the past three books. This is a pattern that I\u2019ve really started to notice with this novel, but I hope we see some character development from someone else other than Julia.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lack of character development is something I\u2019ve noticed on the whole as I\u2019ve read more of the Renshaw family saga. I think it\u2019s something to do with the writing style, as certain characters (Grams, Grandpapa, and Fox) are written to kind of just hop in and out of the story. They\u2019re very consistent in maintaining their negative\/tolerant attitudes towards Phoebe and her investigations throughout the series, even though her accomplishments should impress them. Lady Phoebe also shows slim development as the series goes on as she\u2019s written as a character that can Do No Wrong; she doesn\u2019t make any mistakes during her investigations, and, for some reason, feels constantly responsible for worrying about everything and everyone in her path. As the books are narrated from either her or Eva\u2019s points of view, it makes her seem very spoiled and naive.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What proved Lady Phoebe\u2019s naivete to me in this novel was that when Julia went away without telling anyone, Phoebe went overboard with worry as if she and Julia hadn\u2019t been fairly estranged for most of their adult relationship. She also determined not to tell her grandmother that Julia was away, thinking that her grandmother would be too upset and she could solve the issue without her grandmother ever knowing. I found this to be a really childish reaction, especially as Julia is very responsible, she\u2019s an adult, has been married, and should be able to leave a property by herself without anyone getting in a tizzy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lady and Lady\u2019s Maid series is entertaining, but it is written fairly simply – although not as irritatingly simply as the Kurland St. Mary series by Catherine Lloyd. I actually think Julia\u2019s line of the story is what keeps me reading, and I\u2019m surprised by that as she\u2019s a lesser character in the novels than Phoebe and Eva. But, I find her to be the most real of all the characters and, for me, the most relatable. I am happy to read the next installment of this series when I need a cheerful, easy, cozy mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thank you to NetGalley, Alyssa Maxwell, and Kensington Books for the complimentary copy of this book in return for an honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the latest installment of the Lady and Lady\u2019s Maid mystery series by Alyssa Maxwell, Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her maid Eva Huntford are enthusiastic about opening the Renshaw family estate for tours. However, the rest of the Renshaw family has some misgivings, which are soon realized beyond their expectations when a tour guest isContinue reading “A Deadly Endowment – Alyssa Maxwell”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":375,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,33,52,128,157,165,211,221,236,283,287,293,314,343,344],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alyssa-maxwell","tag-arc","tag-book-review","tag-eva-huntford","tag-historical-fiction","tag-historical-mystery","tag-kensington-books","tag-lady-and-ladys-maid-mysteries","tag-london","tag-murder-mystery","tag-mystery","tag-netgalley","tag-phoebe-renshaw","tag-renshaw-family","tag-review","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/a-deadly-endowment.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":634,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}