Albertine Honeycombe finds herself in a dilemma. Her obnoxious cousin now owns her ancestral home and wants her to marry the neighboring farmer with fifteen kids. She and her best friend, Joan, set off for London to fulfill her dream, and the promise made to her dying brother, to become a detective.

Assuming a false identity as a countess, she attempts to get jobs with the wealthy women that she now encounters. One of them hires her to retrieve some dangerous love letters. After she drugs the holder of the letters and successfully delivers them to her client, the drugged lord shows up dead.

In the meantime, the detective from Scotland Yard, who has recently become a duke, due the death of his older brother, decides to pretend he is working with Albertine to find out more information. But he finds himself falling in love with him. And she with him.

Albertine is arrested for murder. And the duke and Joan set out to prove her innocence.

This book was a lot of fun. As a period novel, it gave the reader a wonderful glimpse of the life of a woman in Victorian London. The characters were well=developed.. The plot was compelling. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Fun, light-hearted and an easy read. This is my first book by the author and I loved it. I will certainly read other books by her. I loved the writing style and the plot. I would really recommend this book.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC for this book. (Also, this was more of a historica romance book).
#TheMayfairDagger #NetGalley

This was fun. I have read this author before and their novels are light-hearted, easy reads. Not sure that it's strictly cozy but it's not historical romance either. I enjoy the humour, often with this type of novel the humour is a bit over done but it was good. Outlandish in parts but funny. It doesn't mention anywhere that it's a series but I would read the next one if it is.

First, thank you to Crooked Lane and NetGalley for the ARC.

I'm always caught in the riptide of any book for fans of Deanna Raybourn, and the Mayfair Dagger had a very promising start, as we meet Albertine in the midst of retrieving letters being used to blackmail a member of the ton while using her smarts and her wiles to get herself out of a bad situation. As she tussles with Lord Grendel in his office he asks who she is and she calls herself the dagger - which is such a badass vigilante-esque title.

After chapter one, I think The Mayfair Dagger takes a pretty roundabout turn from being a murder mystery, as it isn't until 40% through the book that we even really know that Lord Grendel has been murdered. I would classify The Mayfair Dagger as more of a historical fiction romance novel, as most of the plot is entirely intertwined on the almost instalove romantic feelings between Albertine and Spencer, and the secrets they are keeping from each other - the murder is dormant in the background.

Ava January has a great voice, and she has very capable bones that make up the skeleton of the story. As a romance novel, I think this book would appeal to historical fiction romance readers.

As a mystery/murder genre, I think there are three main items that needed some finessing for me to want to continue the series:

1) Characterization -- January has flashes of creating this very strong, very capable female detective -- she reminds me of Lady Arianna Hadley from Andrea Penroses's Lady Arianna Regency series, who is also a woman without means trying to navigate Victorian London independently. Where they differ is that Albertine waffles significantly between confident detective & jealous love interest & a weak boss who keeps taking jobs where no one pays her. When it seems like this is all accomplished in one month and one week from leaving the countryside for London -- I just don't know if Albertine as a character is who I expect her to be at any time. She seems solely caught up in Spencer and doesn't seem to really navigate her own personal life well. At one point in the jail Albertine is screaming and yelling and throwing a fit, and in the next chapter she is confident woman friend of all prisoners -- or when the incident with the coffin happens it's just an oopsie moment of hilariously good intentions, but it doesn't portray her as the same woman from chapter one (also Scotland Yard views her as the prime suspect even though they should have seen the body and the same evidence as Albertine - which would theoretically clear her of the last 30% of the book) . Her relationship with Joan is also troubling throughout the story - it seems like they will come to blows over Spencer or like Joan is just helping everything around Albertine fall apart. If they were basically raised as sisters, and Joan did schooling for a time with Albertine, their relationship on the page did not read to me as friendship - and at times Joan's immaturity seemed to be a reflection on the view of the working class that didn't quite sit right with me.

2) The romantic relationship between Spencer and Albertine is also a bit much in the first book. There is not a slow build, even though Spencer believes her to be married for a considerable amount of the novel. When Albertine is saying how he is the sun to her still very early in the relationship it just took away from the mystery entirely. There is also a lot of public physical contact that did not seem to fit with the time period. The ending proclamations were a lot to take in. If you're into instalove, this will be a great story for you, but for me some parts of it seemed so far flung with a main character who was already fluctuating a lot from my first point. One of the fluctuations that also didn't sit right with me: Albertine hires Spencer so she gets paid for her work, but the first job he helps her with with Fancy, he doesn't present himself to get any payment - they're both so focused on each other that parts of the plot seem to fall away around them.

3) The ending -- I didn't read the help from the others at the end as Albertine having made friendships and built a place for herself in London. The final ending 15% just felt like a very big plot explosion with a lot happening around it, and it didn't seem feasible based on all the interactions from previous chapters or the Victorian time period.

I think this series may be a miss for me. Once I recognized it was different than my expectations I was able to enjoy the outlandish aspects to it, but it doesn't quite fit what I want from this genre.