2024 Victorian romance, third and last of the Wedgeford Trials
series. Andrew Uchida is an earl's heir, but really deosn't want to
lose his village life to inherit. Then Lily Bei returns to his life,
having done him a favour by tracking down the proof of his inheritance…
As usual with Milan there's a lot going on here and I found the
rest of it often more interesting than the romance. (Andrew has
decided that he can't marry because the retainers of the "real" Earl
would take steps to get rid of this pretender if they knew he existed;
Lily has always felt awkward and out of place, especially in
conversation.) But the shenanigans surrounding the inheritance are
more fun: Andrew's half-brother, the current heir, is determined that
he doesn't want to inherit either, but one of them is bound to end
up with the title. Meanwhile, Lily (sent to Hong Kong by her
grandfather) has come back with a printing press and even more radical
ideas than she had before.
And there's the romance too. But at least for me it didn't have the
sparkle of either the earlier books' romances or the other things
going on here; it felt too clearly predestined, the obstacles too
obviously there to be surmounted. That may just have been my mood, of
course.
If this came over as a little flat compared with the other books in
the series I still enjoyed it, and I particularly appreciate Milan's
efforts in learning to do a thing at least to a dilettante level
before she writes about a person who's doing it seriously.
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