Weeeeeell. I was so excited to see that Mad Miss Mimic was going to be released in the US, after falling in love with the cover and the premise prior to its release in Canada. I quickly requested it on Netgalley and read it. And it's taken me this long to write a review. So.

I suppose there's nothing overtly wrong with Mad Miss Mimic. When I finished (after rather laboriously making my way through), I was left mostly with boredom and sadness that I'd been so bored. Leo is a character who mostly just lets things happen around her, and gets lucky in the things that happen. Her speech impediment is a huge part of who she is, and that's done well, but a disability does not a book make.

Not only all of that, but it's pretty obvious who our bad guy is going to be and the climax is not all that climactic. It's like there's a lot of interesting things, yet nothing has the punch it needs. Everything just left me feeling meh, and pretty sad I'd spent the hours to read the book, short as it is.

And, finally, I hate a lot of the ending. Any kind of power Leo has gained for herself is lost in the wallowing she does just before the ending, and it becomes so...simple. Somehow everything is made right (including Leo's speech impediment) and it's just not compelling.

Honestly, my advice is to skip this one. It's got so much that pushes my "love" buttons, but it just doesn't pay off. There are plenty more YA historical fiction novels you could read otherwise, and most would be a better use of your time. I'm sad to say it, but it's true.

*I received this copy in exchange for my honest review.

To be honest, this book was a bit hard to get through. Maybe it was too predictable, I’m not sure. I wanted to love it, but it unfortunately fell short for me.

This was really, really good. It was a gothic teen thriller and the writing was exquisite, similar to Jennifer Donnelly. The heroine was very original. and the author obviously did her research well. I really enjoyed this!

I don't typically read realistic fiction but this book was delightful. The relationships between the characters was gripping and the setting was dense. It was easy to lose yourself in the book.

I unfortunately was not able to read this book. I was excited when ever I had chosen to download or pick this book up on Netgalley. However, time moves by so quickly and I never got to read it.

2.5

This book wasn’t quite what I expected. The synopsis was intriguing, but the execution fell a little flat for me. It was really hard to get into, and took me a long time to finish, even though the book itself isn't very long.

Leo’s mimic ability was an interesting idea, but it wasn’t really believable. How was she able to mimic a grown man’s baritone perfectly? And adult voices when she was just a child? It also seemed like in some cases she picked up their mannerisms as well as their voices, yet had no control over either. It just seemed a little too far fetched to be believable.

The story was also pretty predictable. I knew how things were going to go long before they ever happened. For a mystery, it certainly wasn’t very mysterious. I guess I was hoping for a little more mystery and believability than what I actually got. I think I would have enjoyed the story more if I had gotten those things.

I loved this book! The full review will be posted soon at kaitgoodwin.com/books! Thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity to connect books to their readers!

I am in love with the cover of this book. I want to give the designer a round of applause. I'd have this framed in my house. That was my entire reason for picking up this book. You remember the old adage, never judge a book by it's cover? I should have listened to that, because the story inside never really matched the cover.

Instead of a girl traipsing through a meadow of beautiful flowers the reader is dropped in a Jane Austen era historical novel that reminded me of a light version of The Madman's Daughter by Megan Shepherd.

Leo is from a wealthy family but she has a speech impediment that forces her to mimic those around her. She can do a perfect imitation of anyone's voice and can even repeat conversations she has overheard. This leads others to believe she is inhabited by spirits, doing this on purpose for attention, or worse yet trying to ruin the lives of others.

I liked Leo as a character. She could be soft-spoken, or she'd allow other voices to do the talking for her, but at the end of the day she had a lot of internal monologue going on and the reader really understood the speech issue she was coping with and how it made her feel.I couldn't say the same for the people around her. Leo is surrounded by an arsenal of people not looking out for her best interests. Her sister being the worst.

I was not a fan of the romantic subplot in Mad Miss Mimic. I didn't feel any real connection between Leo and her beau. Their relationship also verged in to eye-roll territory toward the end. It would have helped if there had been more showing of affection rather than telling. This book seemed to suffer from that trait a lot.

Overall, this was an okay historical fiction novel. I liked the overall atmosphere and Leo herself but the other characters were not fully developed and the plotline felt shoe-horned in rather than built from the ground up. But, that cover is still gorgeous. Just saying.

Rate: 1.5 out of 5 stars
Recommend: No

When I read the synopsis of this book, I was intrigued and thought it would be about a young Victorian-era woman using her disability to stop the crimes of a madman/gang. I thought this would be a book about a strong female MC who uses her speech disability to help her or those around her and not let it determine her life. I was wrong on all fronts.

This is a predictable insta- love story with a tab bit of action. From the first chapter it is pretty easy to determine 1) who she will end up with 2) how the story will end 3)that she will have to "choose" between 2 completely different men and 4) from the start you can easily guess who is behind the bombings going on. Honestly, I was bored and wishing SOMETHING unexpected would happen.

Seriously, the first half of this book is full of the MC admiring and being all lovely-dovey about this "perfect" man her sister and brother-in-law have set her up with. She just talks about how he is the perfect man and how she will be so happy with him. But wait! Her thoughts are also occupied with thinking about a man who works for her brother-in-law and is below her station. Why is she thinking about him? Why does he plague her thoughts?! Could it be? Why yes! Even though she has spent time with him since she arrived to live with her sister, after them saying a few handful of words to each other and spending a little bit of time in the same space, he has fallen in love with him! How shocking! How romantically tragic! How predictable and boring.

And what else? Her intended seems to be exhibiting strange behavior. She new beau and her brother-in-law are acting suspicious and she must investigate. Why? Because we need a plot and she makes a character 180 change in the middle of the book. Because she is the MC and obviously has to be the hero.

Seriously, I was constantly rolling my eyes and sighing. The ending was a non-ending since the scene that should have been HUGE was not, the way it happened had me questioning how, since if the bad guy is so smart, he definitely would have predicted it possibly happening and taken precautions, the sister has a weird scene that kind of doesn't do anything for the plot, and the last couple of chapters are spent with the MC being on bed rest and depressed and then her all of a sudden being better because a completely predictable thing happens.

Honestly, I should have DNF'd this book, but it was short and I was laid up in bed on bed rest and unable to read any of my physical books, so I figured I should probably catch up on my Netgalley books. I won't recommend this book to anyone, but I also won't tell you not to read it because that is your choice.

This was interesting to say the least. I loved the Victorian-era setting, the plot was intriguing and I like the main character and her story. I enjoyed it and thought it was a refreshing change from so many YA novels.

Unfortunately, I DNFed this book in the first 15%. It just didn't grab my attention.

Predictability gets in the way of an otherwise interesting premise.

Thank You to the Publisher for my Galley of this book.

I, unfortunately, had a hard time with the news clippings on both my phone (used for most of my galley reading until recently) and on my new Kindle voyager (my new actual e-reader). So I ended up picking up my own copy so I can give a full, proper review.

None of this in any way reflects my opinion of the novel.

I opened this book and realized I probably should have waited longer than a week after finishing Victorian Lit to sit and read this.Not because I was disposed to *dislike* what I was reading--but because I became hyper aware of every fact that was on the page and double checking it in my mind.

There was a fact about how operas were run in America that I stopped, and thought over, and had to disagree with. Not even because Vic Lit taught me that. But because I took a musical theater history class that focused on how America did musicals through the ages. And that one iffy fact kept poking at me through THE ENTIRE NOVEL.

(one-track mind, y’all)

Mad Miss Mimic is marketed as Sir Conan Arthur Doyle meets Jane Austen and that’s actually why I requested it! I just finished Pride and Prejudice as well as six Sherlock Holmes stories and was super excited to have the parts I loved mashed together in a single book. I actually put my request for this book in while I was *in* class. Don’t tell my professor.

While the book touches on elements from Austen’s romances and Doyle’s mysteries, I never felt that there was enough of either element for me to be truly satisfied. I wanted the romance to stick to me a bit more and I wanted to be in love with their love. There was no mystery! Sherlock is cheesy but at least there’s a little bit of guessing which pieces fit together! With Mimic, I was like: oh, here’s the plot point, I wonder when it will be introduced (hint: it took too long).

Maybe I was spoiled by all those books I read this past semester in Victorian Lit (that I severely disliked). Or maybe I was spoiled by the fact I simply wanted the book to be expanded and worked on a heckuva lot more. There’s room to explore beyond the traditional Victorian knowledge that everybody knows. Which I was hoping for????

So again, I *really* shouldn’t have read this right after I took Victorian Lit.

I’m just gonna *hides in hands*

I’m just gonna shelve this at three stars. It’s not bad. It’s also not something I’m looking to pick up again anytime in the near future.

I tried to read this one a few different times but just could not get past the 50 page mark. I was really excited to read this one, and the cover is stunning, but I just kept finding my mind wandering while I was reading.

I was surprised by how much I liked this book! It's a historical fiction romance about the Victorian Era in England with a little mystery on the side. I really liked Leonora and thought she was a great character. This was a fun and easy read.

Jane Austen in the blurb had me hooked but the clichéd and predictable plot was rather disappointing.

Enjoyable, victorian era story, with a rather predictable plot. While there is some mystery, it's rather predictable for people who have read enough books.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity.

I freakin' love this book! And I am so sad it only took me two days to read it! I'm going to read it again, no doubt about it.

But onto the details first...

Sarah Henstra's MAD MISS MIMIC is about one Leonora Sommerville who lives in Hastings House with her sister and her doctor brother-in-law in Victorian era London. Leo, as she prefers to be called is seventeen and her older sister is desperately trying to marry her off despite the facts that she suffers from selective mutism, stuttering, and outbursts of mimicry. Naturally, Dr. and Mrs. Dewhurst decide the bad doctor's business partner, the future Lord Rosbury, is the perfect match for the unmarried sister - he needs a pretty wife who won't say much, after all.

This does not work out, for anyone.

As you might expect.

Dr. Dewhurst is perfecting the art of morphine, on the poor of London who suffer terribly at his hands, while keeping his wife dosed up on laudanum. The future Lord Rosbury is arguing for a ban on opium after getting very rich already on importing opium into England. Leo figures she really ought to get married to someone who doesn't mind her speech problems, of which her sister is absolutely horrible about, so she resigns herself to a life as Lady Rosbury.

But then...

Somebody keeps blowing things up in London and killing people, all related to the potential opium ban. And Leo begins to suspect that Dr. Dewhurst and her future husband isn't all it seems on the surface. So, with the help of Tom - the lockpick, pickpocket, mechanical genius who is working against the partnership already, she begins to investigate.

And the twist there? Tom loves Leo and Leo loves Tom.

All the wrong social circles, though, of course.

But there is drama, there is suspense, there is medicine, there is mystery, there is history, there is romance, there is angst, there is love... and everybody should read this book!

(I received a copy of MAD MISS MIMIC through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest and original review. All thoughts are my own.)

Leo was born into a family with privilege and in 1870 she is short of nothing. Living with her wealthy sister, Leo seems to have the perfect life. But an intense speech impediment (stuttering) stops her from speaking, causing her to mimic her aunt's words in order to satisfy society's curiosity.

Thus causing suitors to stay away from her except adventurer Mr. Thornfax. But why would he want a woman like her? And is he connected to the terror attacks plaguing the city with victims are taken over by opium fever? Leo must find out the truth and find her true voice.

What I enjoyed about this book was the original idea. A woman during the 1870s with a stuttering issues, and no about of doctor visits can solve the issue. I liked how the author brought a different light to the "perfect" woman (protagonist). But this was a hard read as there wasn't a whole lot of conversation due to obvious reasons. Therefore, the tone sounded the same for a majority of the book and that is a huge problem for me.

I didn't have an issue with Leo as a character. But I did have an issue with her lack of personality. Although for some time she tried not to speak, I didn't think that was grounds for making her a bit lifeless. I wanted some kind of spark, rebellion from her not when she needed to find the truth but from the beginning.

The pace of the novel was a bit slow. It takes a while for things to really happen and the beginning of the book doesn't really get you involved in the book. I wasn't sucked into this story at all, which is extremely unfortunate but it wasn't a bad book but it wasn't a great read either.

Overall,

2 Pickles

This is a very interesting novel not only because it deals with Leo and her speech issues but also because it wraps in a lot of history. I know this is meant for the YA market but it's a pretty good read for an adult as well. You'll learn a little bit about Victorian London (always interesting) and appreciate how things have changed, especially for women. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Recommend.