I always enjoy Victorian Historical Fiction, romance, and a bit of magic. :-) ( )

Enjoyable with just a touch of fantasy. I'll pick up the next one when I'm in the mood for a fun, light read. ( )

{First of 13 in Glass and Steele series; fantasy, magic} (2016)

India Steele, the watchmaker's daughter with a talent for fixing timepieces, expected to inherit her father's business. Instead, her fiancé tricked her out of it and dumped her, leaving her with no money and no home and, as a woman, India has no recourse. And, though her father was a member of the watchmakers' guild, they refused to accept India as a member, since she's a woman, so she has no professional support.

Matt Glass - tall, dark, handsome and well muscled - is half English, half American and has come to London with his friends and his very American cousin to find a particular watchmaker who is the only one who can mend his special watch - but time is running out.

India can help him with her knowledge of the watchmakers of London and so he employs her. However things don’t go smoothly for them as they realise that the watchmakers' guild has something against India when their members are reluctant to talk to her. And, as they travel around London, someone seems to be following Matt.

India realises that Matt and his friends are keeping information from her; his watch has strange properties, though he tries to hide it, and the newspapers are full of articles about ‘the Dark Rider’, a dangerous outlaw from America who arrived in England at around the same time as Matt.

On top of all this, there is the unexpected addition to Matt’s household of his very English aunt, Miss Letitia Glass, who is also the sister of the Baron of Rycroft.

What has India got herself into?

The book is set in Victorian times though it cheerfully ignores the strict propriety of the era to focus on the story of Matt’s unusual watch and the unfairness of the guild’s treatment of India. There are some moments of ...er ... close contact between the protagonists, though mild enough that the story still qualifies as young adult.

Oddly, for an Australian author writing about Victorian London, there were some Americanisms scattered around in odd places (not necessarily from the American characters) such as when the upper class English Miss Glass mentioned that someone had ‘fixed a meal’ for her.

These were small issues. On the whole, this was lighthearted and fun and easy to read. I'm looking forward to following India's and Matt's further adventures.

(October 2023)
3.5 stars ( )

I initially thought I could explain the many problems of this book as artistic freedom but the further I read the more obvious it became that it's simply incompetence.
This story plays in the late 19th century but its women are modern feminists.
This in itself could have been an interesting exploration of how more modern self-understanding of women might play out in a fictional historical setting.
The problem is that the women are inexcusably stupid. They are the perfect example of witless fools pretending to be self-reliant strong feminists. It's honestly an insult to any modern woman to present strong females as this stupid and pathetic.
But let me continue with my original point about the setting, it's littered with a myriad of contradicting details about the time.
No one mistake on its own is particularly significant but the sheer amount of them shows the utter lack of care by the author.
Let me give just one example. Apples are supposedly commonly available all the time. But in reality, they are a very seasonal fruit that is only year-round available in modern times because of large-scale global trade. Again, most of these mistakes are not significant to the story itself in any way but they completely break my immersion. And this might sound like I am on some sort of mad hunt for small mistakes but that is really not the case. They are just so very obvious that I can't help but notice when stumbling across them.
This author apparently thought that putting a few 19th-century cliches and some old-timey-sounding words and phrases on top of a bunch of modern people and making most men sexist pigs would make for a decent historical setting. The women are either witless fools or witless fools pretending to be emancipated surrounded by a bunch of despicable and misogynist men.
It's shallow and lazy.
And my frustrations don't stop there either.
The romance, and that is all this book is really trying to be, a shallow and clichéed romance, is uninspired and weak. The plot is only a cover to get the romantic tension between the MC and her love interest going. We have everything from mild other guy drama to dramatic rescues of the damsel in distress to the spicy and inappropriate touches which are super sexy and totally not creepy because the dude is hot...
You name it. I am not sure if the story gets to actual smut because I dnfed too early to find out.

What drove me to drop the book was a particular scene where the MC confronts the watchmaker guild council and utterly fails to defend herself or make any relevant or logical arguments. She has a rocket launcher worth of good arguments but instead, she ends up making arguments with a sling-shot. This kind of thing will get me to drop a book almost every time.

The book is well-written in terms of flow and pacing. It is easy to read and the emotions and motivations of the characters are easy to follow. It's just very simple overall.
But there is no actual meat to the story. It's just vibes and handwaving.

tl;dr:
The book suffers from frequent historical inaccuracies and presents modern feminist ideals in a 19th-century setting in a manner that feels inauthentic.
The portrayal of women as witless fools and most men as sexist is shallow and offensive.
While the writing flow and pacing are commendable, the romance is clichéd and superficial, and the story lacks substance. ( )

interesting cozy set in late victorian london. main characters were well-developed, while compatriots and evil counterparts were rarely much more than scenery... perhaps better introductions to these characters will happen in later books. still, the story was interesting and decently plotted... ( )