Dear me. This book puts me in a quite a predicament, because I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

First off, the good stuff:

I liked the Victorian world that the author created. Dress, customs, and attitudes are meticulously detailed in the beginning and the book is very well-written. I'm partial to books set in this time period, so it's always a pleasant surprise when the world-building feels authentic to me.

The not so good stuff:

* the mystery is a snooze. It's very easy to guess why Lady Julia's husband has been murdered, so it's rather tiresome that the characters aren't catching on sooner.
* sometimes the turn of a page means that a whole year has passed.
* there is far too much feminism presented in this book. It didn't bother me in the beginning, but after awhile, there was just too much of it, and most of it is inserted rather clumsily.
* you'd think that with so much raging femininity going on, Lady Julia would play a more pivotal role in uncovering the mystery. She does eventually pursue clues (after a long period of being pretty clueless), but there is a certain lack of urgency and intellectual reasoning about the way she went about it.
* Julia herself is interesting...but not quite compelling just yet.
* our hero is a Nancy Drew! Nicholas Brisbane can do it all: he is a detective, a prizefighter, a violinist, a (view spoiler)[half Rom (hide spoiler)], a (view spoiler)[psychic (hide spoiler)] (for no apparent reason), and a delectable morsel of a man all in one. At one point our fair damsel actually thinks about dessert while she's looking at him.

The most important thing, however, is that there is just far too much going on in this book. There are murders, an excessive amount of siblings, interactions with prostitutes and mistresses, pretty boxes full of secret (view spoiler)[condoms (hide spoiler)], feminist agendas, gypsies, fully out lesbians, and (view spoiler)[secret homosexual affairs (hide spoiler)] all cobbled together in a rather haphazard fashion. I also didn't realize when I purchased the 3-book bundle from Amazon that this is published by Mira, which is an imprint of Harlequin--which means that there is both more swooning than I expected, but also less of it, as the romantic angle really doesn't go anywhere. I suppose this will be developed in the later books, but the tone this first book strikes for Julia and Nicholas' relationship is very confusing.

Overall, I was fairly entertained, but the enjoyment is very nearly outweighed by puzzlement and disappointment. I'm going with 3 stars because the author did do a really great job with building Victorian London--but I do hope that all the other elements, particularly the mystery, will be better presented in future installments of the series. I am very grateful, however, that Lady Julia does not don a pair of breeches in this book. Not even once.