Lord & Lady Spy by Shana Galen

 

It’s Regency & Victorian Reads this week here at ROYAL REVIEWS.

This week our lovely Royal Reviewers will be featuring books that have caught their fancy that are set in the Regency or Victorian Eras.

 

 

 

 Title: Lord & Lady Spy
Author: Shana Galen
ISBN: 978-1-4022-5907-4
Publishers: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Pages: 416
Release Date: September 2011
Format: Mass Market
$6.99
How I Read It: Mass Market UAC* (Uncorrected Advance Copy)
Rating: 5 Crowns A Royal Read

NO MAN CAN OUTSMART HIM…

 Lord Adrian Smyth may appear a perfectly boring gentleman, but he leads a thrilling life as one of England’s most preeminent spies, an identity so clandestine even his wife is unaware of it. But he isn’t the only one with secrets…

BUT ONE WOMAN ALMOST CERTAINLY CAN…   

Now that the Napoleonic wars have come to an end, daring secret agent Lady Sophia Smythe can hardly bear the thought of retuning home to her tedious husband. Until she discovers in the dark of night that he’s is not who she thinks he is after all…

Want to read an excerpt? Click Here.

 

First Thoughts When I Read the Blurb:

A Regency Era Mr. and Mrs. Smith???!!!! Yes, Please!!!!

A Quick Summery:

Lord and Lady Smythe seem to be your average marriage-of-convenience-Regency-era couple. Each have their own lives, he has his gentleman’s club, she her charitable work. Both attend the obligatory functions required by society. Both are hiding covert lifestyles that center around the top-secret Barbican group. Ok, so the last one may be a bit out of the norm for a Regency couple (or any couple for that matter), but when said Regency couple happen to be spies for a top-secret government agency intent on stopping Napoleon, stitching up a bullet wound on your way to a soirée is just another day on the job. Of course it is still a bit tricky when neither knows that other is a spy.

With Napoleon captured the Barbican group no longer feels the need to keep all of their members, thus Agent Wolf and Agent Saint are dismissed. Both are upset over the fact that they have been let go and start to wonder what to do with their life now they are no longer spies. When both are separately summoned by the Prime Minister to investigate the murder of his brother, each are in for the shock of their lives when they come to the realization they both are spies.

Everything the two thought they knew about the other, flew out the window, once they tried to kill each other. Now they find themselves in a competition of sorts, who ever can find the murderer will win back their position in the Barbican group. Not only do they have a murder to solve they have a marriage to save. And one will be a whole lot easier than the other.

My Thoughts:

I have to say that this was an incredibly fun read and an entirely new type of book for me. I simply could not put in down.

While this is a spy novel, it is also a romance novel. You could feel the tension between Adrian and Sophia. It wasn’t because they were spies; it was because they never truly learned who the other was. In fact they themselves had no idea who they were, so how could they start to figure out who the other was? Take the following excerpt for example:

 “Now that he knew her true identity, she no longer had to sneak out of the house in unfashionable clothing or heavy mantles. She could wear what she liked, be herself-whoever that was. Well, she knew one thing about herself. She liked O’Neill hats.”

You could see that they both desperately wanted that position in the Barbican group, but you also could feel how much they wanted to save their marriage. Both knew nothing about being a spouse and both had suffered greatly. The losses Sophia had suffered caused her to put up a shield and she has no intentions of letting it down just to please her husband. She was constantly on guard and her lifestyle made it hard to trust her husband. , then again once a spy always a spy.

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. A brilliant take on a Regency Romance that had me hooked until the very last page. It also left me wondering what happened once the book was closed and that in itself spoke volumes as to the way this novel pulled me in.   I would love for this to become a series of Regency Era Spy novels, although I am not sure what that author intends.

If you are looking for a different sort of Romance, please give LORD AND LADY SPY a go.
Filled with action, mystery, allure, intrigue, romance, and of course spies LORD AND LADY SPY definitely garners a 5 Crown Royal Read Rating from me!

Be forewarned- if you see some crazy lady in your local bookshop rambling on about how good LORD AND LADY SPY is and that you should purchase a copy, it’s probably me!  No, I am not a crazy book lady, I just loved this book!

Giveaway time. Because I loved Lord and Lady Spy so much, I purchased a copy to giveaway to my dear readers!

Here are the rules:

Contest is Open Internationally.

To enter please leave your name and a valid email address.

Contest ends October 15 .

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Feel free to advertise this giveaway on your site.

*The UAC was provided by Sourcebooks.

*The giveaway copy was purchased by me

 

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