A Pretty Deceit

A Pretty Deceit (2020) Anna Lee Huber (Verity Kent)

Set in England in 1919

Verity and Sidney are still searching for evidence of the crimes they know were committed by Lord Ardmore, but in the meantime, Verity’s parents guilt her into visiting her aunt, whose house had been damaged by the RAF soldiers living there during the war, and whose cousin returned from the floor blind.

I borrowed this from the library when it became available, so even though I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for it, I read it anyway.

Which probably means I enjoyed it less than I might have otherwise.

One of the things I particularly liked were Verity’s interactions with her cousin. Initially she isn’t sure how to treat him, but she does figure it out, and you can see that he had desperately been needing some kind of normalcy in his life, which is mother (her aunt) was completely able to give him. Also, both were still struggling with the losses of their siblings, which gave them a point to bond over.

Mostly I just had problems getting into the story. I’d forgotten the events of the previous book, and there weren’t quite enough reminders me to feel as if I’d caught up, which kept pulling me from the story as I was trying to figure out / remember what had happened.

Perhaps because I wasn’t fully immersed in the story, I also kept finding weak points in the story. It wasn’t anything big, just doubts that the characters would have acted quite in the way they did. Such as Sidney’s reactions to some of the things in Verity’s past. At times he came across as old fashioned but at others he felt strangely modern–I could never quite get a feeling for how he would react in any given situation.

None of these were deal-breakers for this story, but I think that if I’d been more in the mood for this book (or had recently re-read the previous book) I might have enjoyed it more.

Publisher: Kensington Books

Rating: 7/10

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