My Lord and What Now?

This review is for the audiobook version of My Lord and Spymaster, by Joanna Bourne.

It was fine? I probably should have written this sooner, since I finished it before starting What Happens in London, but of course I didn’t. It’s the story of a shipper’s daughter trying to defend her father from treason charges. Jess thinks the real traitor is Captain Kennett, the bastard son of a duke, famous for being clever. They both are out to prove they are not stealing and smuggling secrets to the French and to do so need to keep eyes on each other, and we know where that will lead.

Not everything made sense in this novel. There’s a weird backstory on Jess, involving killing in self defense as a child and then being forced (I think?) to work for a mysterious gangster. She turns to the gangster for help in proving her father’s innocence, but it seems an unnecessary risk. The tension is real in this book, very well done, but some of the plot points seem extra and unnecessary. Motives aren’t always logical, and the reveal of the true culprit is ham-fisted.

The reader did a great job making the characters individuals, but her native accent is American and there were no Americans in the story, so the narration sometimes sounded weird, like she couldn’t decide if the non-dialogue parts of the novel should have an English accent or not. There was also a bit of accent switching in some of the characters, especially Jess. I don’t know if it was dictated by the writing or not, but it was weird all the same.