Review--Beauty Like the Night (Spymasters, #6)

Beauty Like the Night by Joanna Bourne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I would have read this through in one sitting but:

1. nature called

2. sleep called

3. it was even better extending the joy of reading a new Joanna Bourne Spymaster novel a second day.

From her first novel, The Spymaster's Lady Bourne treated us to what's really a family saga, a story of French and English agents whose lives cross in the most interesting ways. Her writing is superb and a master class for anyone who thinks you need dialect to write a non-English speaking character. She captures a mood and a moment with rare style, and makes me sigh happily as a writer and a romance reader when I see how she brings her characters to life.

In brief, we met Severine de Cabrillac as a little girl in The Forbidden Rose and saw her unique upbringing referenced once or twice in other novels. It was inevitable that she would go into the family trade. Now though she's retired from spycraft and using her unique skill set as an private investigator in Regency London. When secretive Raoul Deverney surprises her in her bedroom and demands her assistance, she's annoyed and intrigued, enough to risk herself and her heart in helping him find his missing daughter.

Bourne does not write novels quickly, but for me this is part of the enjoyment. They are a rare vintage to to savored, not gulped, and well worth visiting again for a re-read. I will enjoy re-reading her published novels while I eagerly await the next one.


View all my reviews