Review: Uncovering the Governess's Secrets

Here's how old I am. I remember a time when the mere suggestion of first person point of view in a romance novel sent 99% of readers into a fit of apoplexy. I was never one of those readers, mainly because I was a suspense reader long before I was a romance reader, and first person can work very, very well in suspense. For that matter it can work very well in romance. The problem is that for the last decade romance has churned out a ton of terrible first person to the point where it's kind of killed my love for it in this particular genre. 

To be fair, the first person in Uncovering the Governess's Secrets by Marguerite Kaye is not terrible. I even understand it as an authorial choice, given that this latest book is set in Scotland and has overt Gothic undertones. Kaye also avoids the most common pitfall in dueling first person books - she has given both her hero and heroine their own distinct voices. They never read interchangeable, they read like two distinct people. So why didn't I love this?  Well, let's try to explain...

Rory Sutherland is a former policeman turned private investigator and very good at his job. Now living in London he's been hired by a member of the peerage newly come into his title to track down one Marianne Little to right a grave injustice he believes may have been done to her. The beginning of the story opens with Rory finding Marianne, now working as a governess in Edinburgh, a city that Rory is loathe to be back in but work is work. It's the scene of his downfall, back when he was a policeman and got ahold of a case that he couldn't let go of - something that a powerful someone, somewhere wasn't going to let stand. 

Marianne escaped from an asylum three years ago, where she was locked up against her will, thanks to the help of a kindly nurse. That same nurse gave her the connections to start a new life in Edinburgh, but even three years later Marianne still has not stopped looking over her shoulder.  Per his employer's instructions, Rory is to track down Marianne, remain inconspicuous, but maintain her safety.  Unfortunately that gets blown all to hell in the park because these two can't help but notice each other.

As the story unfolds Kaye employs flashbacks to Marianne's time in the various asylums she was locked up in and Rory taking on her missing person's case. Both of them are outsiders, observant to a fault, and share a lot in common. Then there's the world-building and sense of place. Folks, it's a historical that feels like a historical. It feels right that this particular story is set in late 19th century Scotland, between the two cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. From the weather, the sites, to Rory's background - it all fits beautifully.

So where does it go wrong? While the dueling first person does a good job of digging into the characters' thoughts and feelings, it bogs the pacing down. There's a lot of repetitive internal musing and "We're so attracted to each other but we mustn't!" stuff.  Also while I felt the world-building and setting was great, after a while this starts to read too much like a travelogue of various Scottish sites taking time away from the actual, oh I don't know, plot. For a book that essentially has two mysteries in it (Marianne's traumatic past and the case that tarnished Rory's reputation and chased him out of Edinburgh) there's an appalling lack of urgency.  And while the Marianne situation is set to rights?  Justice is most definitely not served on Rory's white whale cold case. Oh sure, he identifies the murdered woman and "gives her family closure" but does he really? No. The bad guy is never identified, although Rory has undisclosed "suspicions," but he feels he can now move on because he's let the woman's family know she's dead. Well, gold star for you boyo /end sarcasm.

Look, I get it. The reality of the conflict in this story is that Men Are Terrible. That woman lacked agency and were at the mercy of men, some of who were awful. Normally this kind of thing can annoy me (tarring an entire gender, race or ethnicity in fiction does that to me), but Kaye avoids that here because she includes male characters who aren't all greedy and vile. But, and here's the thing, I read genre fiction because I want the universe to be righted. I get enough rich, powerful men getting off scot-free and more often than that, "failing up," in real life. I don't want it in my entertainment reading. Please and thank you.

There's a third-act break-up we can see coming from across an ocean, but the resolution works very well for two characters who are past their first bloom of youth (Rory is 40, Marianne firmly in her 30s). It just lacks urgency. This one did not pass the put-down-pick-back-up test for a long time. I do think the dueling first person may work better for readers more tolerant than I, but I do think the pacing is a real issue with the story overall.  I typically like Kaye's work, and she's written some dynamite books, but this one sat firmly in the middle for me.

Final Grade = C+