Friday, February 10, 2023

Book 17: The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian

I kept reading the first book in this series because I had a feeling I would like the sequel better, and I was correct! 

This book overlaps with various parts of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb and benefits because it has much less setup to spend pages and pages on. Rob is blackmailing Marian because her rich duke husband was already married when he married her, which Rob knows because his mother is in fact his actual wife. For some reason (can't imagine what!) the two of them continue to exchange letters even while they should be enemies, and when she needs help after she kills her husband during what was supposed to be a robbery, the two of them escape from London together. 

If that setup sounds a bit convoluted: it is! It's an odd series, but the two of them have great chemistry together, and while the novels can't really decide whether they want to be about a couple of 18th century aristocrats completely throwing away their wealth or if it's something in the middle, it ends in a way that feels less half-baked than the first one. I don't know if the first one is worth getting through to make it to this one, but I felt satisfied by this conclusion. 

Grade: B   

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