Here’s a story about a young woman who gets dealt a rough hand from page one and spends the rest of the book refusing to fold. Mary Whitcombe — orphan, convent girl, first love lost — has more steel in her than she knows, and Nifora is patient enough to let it reveal itself slowly.
The first love is the kind that only works when you’re young and sheltered enough to believe it will last. It doesn’t. What comes after is where the real story begins. The Victorian social machinery Nifora builds is convincing — it’s a world where an innocent woman with no protector is the most vulnerable thing imaginable.
I’ve read cozier mysteries with less tension. Mary Whitcombe has teeth, and it isn’t shy about using them.
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