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Is anyone else reading Julie McElwain?

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TheMadGardener · 13/03/2023 23:52

I have recently got into her "In Time" series which begins with "A Murder in Time". (Book 6, "Ripples in Time, has just come out).

I chose the first one because it was a freebie on Audible but then got hooked and I'm just about to finish book 3 and start on book 4!

I like crime and also like Regency-era novels and this is an original mixture of both. At the start of book 1 our heroine, Kendra Donovan, is an FBI agent. A case she is working on goes horribly wrong and most of her team ends up dead. Kendra goes rogue and goes to England to track down the culprit, who is attending a costume party in a stately home, Aldridge Castle. Kendra sneaks in as part of the hospitality staff and has to dress in Regency costume to do so. While at the castle she walks through a door which takes her through a vortex to 1816. For the next five books she is stuck in Regency England and builds a life there, struggling with the realities of living in that era and especially the difficulties/lack of power of being a woman. Despite this she still ends up using some of her investigative skills to help solve several juicy murders, even while constantly regretting she doesn't have access to all those FBI methods like fingerprinting, DNA, crime databases etc!

I always cringe when reading novels by American writers set in Regency England because of all the Americanisms which creep in, but in this case England is seen through the eyes of an American character so it's allowable (the only thing that bugs me is they keep talking about cream instead of milk in tea!)

The books aren't perfect but the plots rattle along and they're pretty entertaining - well, books 1, 2 and 3 are. I will probably power through all 6.

If you like a pacy yarn, pretty gruesome crime scene descriptions and also quite detailed descriptions of Regency life (Kendra gets to wear some lovely clothes by book 3!) I would recommend you give these a go.

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