Alison Goodman’s Regency mystery, The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies, starts out a little slow for me, but once it picked up speed, the characters and difficult cases keeps the story moving. Goodman’s notes say she’s inspired by Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels. This one takes the best of those stories, ages the characters, while adding mystery and adventure. Get past the opening, and it’s fun.

Lady Augusta Colebrook (Gus) is forty-two. At that age, she and her twin sister, Julia, are definitely spinsters. They’re lucky they have their own income, their own household, and are not dependent on their brother, the Earl of Duffield. But, despite their status in society, Gus is bored. After a successful retrieval of letters for a friend threatened with blackmail, Gus is inspired. Why shouldn’t she and Julia have adventures while helping other women out of difficulties?

Goodman’s characters are wonderful. They do feel as if they stepped out of the pages of a Georgette Heyer novel, but Goodman goes so much further by introducing women who are considered over-the-hill as the main characters, along with a man who was exiled because of a duel. The cases the sisters become involved in involve the social and political issues of the time – women who are legally property of their husbands after marriage, young girls kidnapped for brothels, women consigned to madhouses. The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies is an entertaining introduction to Regency England with mystery and a little romance. Both are to be continued in the next book.

I'm having very mixed feelings about this book and I can't help it! I absolutely loved the characters and the idea of older spinsters in regency London solving crimes and saving people from the bad guys.

That said... I felt kind of bored at times. While there are quite a few capers they are involved in to move the novel along, it wasn't super interesting and didn't really keep me engrossed and on the edge of my seat turning pages.

Thank you so much for the early copy!

OH MY WORD I LOVED THIS!!!! I have been a fan of Goodman since Eon, she has NEVER disappointed me! This was a bit of a departure. I love that Augusta and Julia are in their 40s. I think that due to their age and the fact they have never been married (**gasp**) they are able to better see social injustice and as such they are inclined to right those wrongs. And they are so smart! I loved how Goodman was able to weave in historical people and events.

I really want this book to do well so there will be many more installments to come!

I did enjoy reading this book a lot even though it was not quite what I was expecting. I thought it was going to be about two witty, independent women fighting within their society, and it was that but so much more. I did not think the book would take such a serious turn, but it was very well done. The only problem I had was the ending, it seemed to just end too quickly.

A genuine delight. It's very Georgette Heyer but with a social justice bent, which, like, yes, let's.

This book is way too long, with way too many plot threads. They're not even related plot threads; the story moves from one episode of abused women to the next. And I think 1st-person narrative was the wrong choice to handle all of it.

The romance was non-existent. I didn't like that Gus fell quickly and inexplicably in love with Lord Evan and vice versa—I thought they had a past relationship, but it was only that they'd danced one time together at a ball 20 years ago.

I also didn't like that she kept asking him to help her with investigations after he told her it would be too risky for him to do so. How she didn't figure out that he was trying to tell her it's because he's a fugitive, I don't know.

Overall, not one I'd necessarily recommend for a good time.