Synopsis

“I was sitting at my desk reading, with a cup of tea, my windows flung open, when I heard The Tenant enter his garret, just on the other side of the wall from myself.”

The Year is 1883 and Emma M. Lion has returned to her London neighbourhood of St. Crispian’s. But Emma’s plans for a charmed and studious life are sabotaged by her eccentric Cousin Archibald, her formidable Aunt Eugenia, and the slightly odd denizens of St. Crispian’s.

Emma M. Lion offers up her Unselected Journals, however self-incriminating they may be. Armed with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the curious realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House. (via Amazon)

Review

As the first sequel in this awesome series, I have officially rounded this up to 5-stars!

I had to miss out on the audiobook version of this one since it was not available at my library. Fortunately, this whole series is available on Kindle Unlimited so I just swapped to the electronic version. Similar to the first one, I was able to read through it within a day. The length is short (not even 200 pages) but the humor and intrigue is still very much present.

One characteristic I love about this series is how Beth included a list of the characters already revealed at the beginning of the book. It makes it much easier to keep track of who’s who since there are beginning to be a plethora of interesting people in this world. Also, the end word of the book is written as Emma, speaking about Beth which I thought was another unique touch to this book.

Once again, this takes place within the town of St Crispian’s in London. Emma has gotten more acclimated to being back as her journal entries continue to chronicle the unusual nature of her everyday life.

One of my favorite characters at this point in time is the ‘tenant’ of Lapis Lazuli minor. His mysterious nature given his past career, leads to some interesting conversations with Emma. He is one of the men who have an interesting set up to say the least.

Other than the tenant, we have a duke as well as a charming thief as part of the cast now. The usual shenanigans of cousin Archibald and Aunt Eugenia are constantly happening on the side lines which were quite humorous once again.

As far as the romance aspect is concerned, nothing has developed past thoughts and glances. I will say, there are now about 4 or 5 potential candidates now so that shall be interesting lol.

All in all, I kind of want to binge read this whole series, so we shall see if that comes to fruition lol. I highly recommend this series if you like a good humorous Victorian read with zany characters and wild plots 🙂