This is volume 2 in the Oxford Mysteries series. I loved volume 1 (gave it five stars), but this title just never engaged me. I'm still looking forward to reading volume 3. The central characters—a woman trying to get an Oxford education when women were marginalized with particular hostility and a don who knows he is gay and is frequently anxious about being discovered—are genuinely interesting. The pacing of this volume just felt glacial.
I grabbed the first title without realizing it was a historical murder series, which takes place in Wales in 1850. This is definitely important to the plot, as class, religion, and conquest color every aspect of the story. The writing and the insight into the history of Wales kept me going
I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.
This features Non, who is studying in Oxford, but as a woman in 1881 is not allowed to say she is studying at Oxford, or take the same exams as the men, or get a degree, or go anywhere without a chaperone. This is (naturally) frustrating for her, but the book does harp on about it repeatedly and at greater length than I would have liked. It also features Basil, a don, who is charged with keeping the lid on any scandal surrounding the death of one of his students, Sidney Parker. The mystery surrounding Sidney's death is quite interesting, although again the book does harp on (repeatedly and at length) about a fictitious medical condition I won't attempt to spell, which young men are being sold spurious remedies for. Non and Basil solve the murder although Non (of course) gets no credit for all the things she finds out because she is a woman (see above).
I thought the writing was good, except that Non's chapters and Basil's chapters sounded exactly the same - if I hadn't checked the chapter headings, I would only have been able to tell who was narrating from the context.
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