The first book begins at her aunt’s funeral, where she is saying farewell to her last mortal tie to England and preparing to leave the country, probably for good. She’s something of an ex-pat in her own country: a world traveling lepidopterist (butterfly hunter) who has survived massive and deadly natural disasters abroad AND the social castigation of her small town neighbors.
Veronica Speedwell is a iconoclast in her society – inspired, as I learned in this podcast interview, by real women in history. None of you fit that audience, I know. Certainly not.īecause this is ostensibly a review of the second book, I’ll focus more on that story and the flaws I noticed, but I also want to mention a few excellent things about the characters and the world in which they reside for this series. And the series is a sizable amount of fun if you like historical mysteries, fearless and intelligent heroines who take negative-zero crap from anyone, characters who embrace sarcasm, adventure and nefarious plotting, and taciturn but brilliant heroes with simmering sexual tension. I read the two books one after the other, so my impressions are influenced by their proximity in my brain, but looking solely at book two and skipping book one leaves a wealth of motivation and development behind, and readers would miss out on the full scope of the world building.Īlas, this isn’t a start-anywhere-you-like series, but this is only the second book. I advise that you start with book one, A Curious Beginning, to get a better sense of the world, and the characters.
Genre: Historical: European, Mystery/ThrillerĪ Perilous Undertaking is book 2 in the Veronica Speedwell series.
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