Rating: 3

Lady Margaretha has turned down many suitors, and Lord Claybrook has given her little reason to deny his offer of marriage. But when a foreigner from England turns up half-beaten and insists Claybrook is a murderer, she begins to question Claybrook’s character. After finally convincing Margaretha, Collin confronts Claybrook and is thrown into the dungeon. He and Lady Margaretha escape and seek help from her family to stop an impending attack and plot to kill Margaretha’s father. They face dangers along the way, but the greatest threat of all may be losing their hearts to each other.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. The plot was intriguing. I did like the idea of it, but the execution was not great for me. There were some plot holes early on that annoyed me, and the heroine was….well, obnoxious. Who assumes a man is in love with them when he’s trying to warn them about a murderer???? I almost set this in the DNF pile on multiple occasions. I will say the last 1/3 is a little better, but I was skim reading at that point so that may have been why. The writing itself lacks a lot of depth for me and is often excessively redundant. I had a hard time liking Margaretha for a good chunk of it.

Other issues included grammatical errors, which I’m pretty tolerant of but for a trad book I was surprised by the frequency and by the development issues as well. Also, why is this called The Princess Spy??? Margaretha is a duke’s daughter, therefore not a princess? I don’t understand.

I don’t have an issue with religion in fiction, but if overdone, it can reach the point of being obnoxious for the reader. This was certainly the case for this book.

Not a series I’ll likely continue.