It took me a while to get to this book but I’m glad I finally did. It was an engaging historical romance with a good mystery aspect. Very descriptive writing style. Decent suspense with some darker themes, so sensitive readers should be cautious of triggers. Overall a good read.

The Innkeeper’s Daughter is the first book in The Gentleman Spy Mysteries series by Bianca M. Schwarz. It is a historical romance that features mystery, suspense, and espionage. The book is set in the Regency era, a period of British history that lasted from 1811 to 1820. The book explores the social and political aspects of the time, as well as the challenges that the characters face. The book is suitable for readers who are interested in this genre and this historical setting.

The Innkeeper's Daughter was very engaging and I was into the plotline right away. It's set in England at the end of 1819. The protagonist, Sir Henry March, rescues 18 year old Eliza because of a brutal beating her stepfather gave her and subsequently sold her to a pimp. Henry ends up taking her to his home where she tells him what she's been going through and he commiserates with her and they eventually become friends and build a romantic relationship. I love that they shared a love of books and how that was built into to the plot.

Sir Henry is actually a spy and the plotline creates a great deal of suspense. I love how the pace moved along towards the end of the book while building the suspense so that it became quite the page-turner. As it turns out, he discovers a sex trafficking ring and that really lends to the suspense and many twists and turns.

I really liked both Henry's and Eliza's characters. I found myself rooting for them and I thought the ending, even though it had a cliffhanger, set up nicely for book 2 which I will have to read!

9:16
Lata's Review
Review
Reading Activity
Sir Henry rescues Eliza Broad one night- her father had attempted to all her to a pimp, and she escapes, and encounters Sir Henry on the his way home. She's bruised and battered, and Henry ensures she has the safety and time to recover from her injuries and her fears.
They're both strongly attracted to one another, and Henry ensures he takes things slowly, letting Eliza set the tone.
She becomes his mistress, and becomes somewhat involved in his investigations of a secret society of wealthy men, who meet to abuse and rape women of lower classes for fun.
Henry also has an illegitimate daughter, whom he loves very much, and hopes to enter her into Society at some point, which will require an advantageous marriage for him. The girl, Emily, is being watched by the secret society, as they hope to use her at some point to harm Henry-very fridgey of them.
So Henry and Eliza, and his close friends, work to ferret out the identities of the members, and stop them.
A beautiful cover hides some of the genuinely ugly behaviour and actions that are at the heart of this book: we have kidnapping, abuse, assault, rape, sadism, murder, pimping, and sex trafficking.
The romance works because at no point did Henry diminish Eliza or use her much lower status in society against her. She's intelligent, insightful and warm, and I liked how she blossomed when given the time and support to recover and learn by reading everything she could get her hands on.
The story was reasonably diverting and the cover gorgeous.

The beginning of the book had me hooked and I lost more and more interest as I read. Overall, this was a very meh book.

Occasionally I go into a story not knowing quite what to expect. This was certainly the case with The Innkeeper's Daughter, which I rushed to request on NetGalley (then had trouble finding the time to read) after seeing it and Bianca M. Schwarz's writing praised online by an author whose work I adore. What I found was a mixture of historical mystery, espionage, adventure and romance where the couple knows from the start that they can never marry. And so the young heroine, barely eighteen year old Eliza Broad, happily becomes Sir Henry March's mistress after he has rescued her from the side of the road, where she was fleeing the cruelty of her stepfather and the man who paid twenty pounds for her.

As Eliza quickly learns that Sir Henry is more than the libertine of his reputation and she aids his pursuit of the infamous French spy De Sade Anglais, an ensemble of characters is introduced and danger is never far. While the reader is privy to the activities of Sir Henry and his men, the movements of the villain are less known, and it is not only who he is but the person he most wishes to harm with his choice of victim that seems to be the central mystery to this story.

I do take slight issue with calling this a romance in the traditional sense, and the "barely eighteen" always puts me off, but those are my own sensibilities so I will not address it here but rather talk about what I did like about Sir Henry and Eliza together. While there is a ten year age gap and an even wider divide in terms of social standing, experience, and sophistication, there is also a depth of respect, affection, and an instant ability to adapt to and work with each other that is greatly enjoyable to witness on the page.

The name of this series, The Gentleman Spy Mysteries, very much fits. A mixture of high society, espionage, and mystery that is sure to delight the reader along with a temporary consensual relationship. The intimacies between Eliza and Sir Henry (whose names had me immediately thinking of Pygmalion, which turns out to be somewhat apt) are described on the page, as are the brutalities that are inflicted upon Eliza and other women.

I voluntarily read a digital galley of this book through NetGalley, courtesy of the publisher. A positive review was not required and these are only my own honest opinions. Open door romance.

4 out of 5 stars - I'll tell you to read it, if you ask me

While this book had way more sex than I expected based on the description, I did enjoy the book.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

⭐️⭐️/5

I just found something cringey about the romance between the two main characters. It's basically insta-love and there are VERY few instances where I enjoy those. Maybe drawing out the romance would have helped a bit?

My other main gripe is that "The Innkeeper's Daughter" reads like the author knows anything about the time period it's supposed to be set in. The period convo? I find it very hard to believe they would have ever talked about that, let alone so easily. I just... don't buy it. The modern language thrown in didn't help either.

I won't be reading the sequel.

This book had a good mix of romance, historical, mystery, but at times I would have preferred a strong dominance of one of those. All in all, the mystery and the romance hold their own, and the plot moves at a good pace.

Unfortunately did not finish this book. Was just not for me. Nothing against the authors writing at all.

I started reading this book and found that it was not for me. I didn't think it was fair to review a book I didn't finish.

I think the premise sounded so amazing, but overall I was just not super invested in the characters. This could be due to not jamming with the writing style, it felt a bit too descriptive and long for my liking. I'd be interested to check out something else from the author because I thought the idea was really cool and intriguing.

I tried multiple times to get into this book, for over a year, and it just wasn't my style. That being said, if you LOVE historical thriller and romance and aren't bothered by many descriptions, this could be the perfect book for you! I will say the author did a fantastic job researching the history.

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. Not my type of book but worth a read though a bit long

Eliza & Henry

Notes 📝
Beatings, spies, abuse, mystery, murders, BDSM, mistress, chemistry, dark, old England, friends to lovers, adventure.

This book has some dark sides, but the storyline is very intriguing and good.
I really enjoyed reading it.

A 4 star 🌟 read

Not the book for me but could definitely be the perfect book for someone. Liked the romance but a little too high in the historical department for me.

Sir Henry March, an aristocrat and secret spy, rescues an abused damsel-in-distress in the street, kicking off an uninteresting love story whose best bits are definitely the spy parts (and this is coming from a romance novel blogger!)

Verdict: sluggish storyline, anachronistic style, hints of espionage that are more interesting than a generic Regency love story with limited charms

Now that America is fangirling over Bridgerton, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to check out this advance copy I was sent a few months ago. (I did not realize until posting this that it’s part of a series; it can be treated as a standalone.)

I’m not really a Regency lover – dukes and scoundrels in the Ton are not my jam. So take this review as an outsider opinion. If you’re in the actual target audience, you might feel entirely differently about this book.

Above all, I had difficulty focusing on the content because it was super jarring that so much of the syntax was modern, yet with a few “old-timey” words thrown in there in a clear attempt to emulate the period.

Look, it doesn’t matter if you measure your time by “fortnights” or play commerce and whist when you also have gentlefolk using first names as a norm (our heroine is called “Eliza” by strangers from the outset, rarely Miss Broad), casually taking the Lord’s name in vain (“and God knows what else”) without the slightest recognition that it might be profane, and considering it perfectly acceptable to move a young woman into the residence of an unknown young bachelor indefinitely, without supervision or chaperones.

The latter is the essential premise of the novel. And I’m pretty sure it would have been considered grounds for a woman’s “ruin” in 1800s England. But this book treats it as largely unremarkable, as long as she plans to leave his home eventually.

Again, I’m far from a period romance aficionado, so perhaps this anachronistic writing style is a widely accepted convention within the subgenre. Maybe it’s only odd to me, and regular Regency readers are used to it. Nonetheless, my personal preference would be either to be more consistent with the period-based style or to go all modern in the storytelling style, despite the setting. This mashup of modern sentence structure and behavior peppered with some antiquated word choices? No thanks. It makes for weirdly stilted writing.

Since the style pulled so much of my mental focus away from the story, I have relatively little to say about the characters. Again, I think a byproduct of this writing is that the world and the characters become a lot less believable. A young woman agrees to move in to a total stranger’s house, where she stays for however long it takes to recover from injury. She doesn’t mind that they’re alone except for his housekeeping staff, and he wants to help and protect her in all other regards but doesn’t spare a thought to protecting her reputation or marriagability. How can I feel attached to them or their fates, when they don’t feel remotely real? I don’t think I can. So my reaction is somewhat muted, because these characters and their romance were rather unconvincingly portrayed.

TLDR: A middling commitment to the period lessens the appeal of this standard Regency romp, and the spy thriller elements fail to overcome its blandness.

If you put aside some of the modern day language and lack of reality this was an enjoyable romance. The plot was pretty predictable and there wasn’t anything original. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

This is the first book in the Gentleman Spy Mysteries series.
It's a historical romance mystery series set in Regency London.
The book is meticulously researched.
It's darkness is offset by characters you just can't forger who steal the show.
It's gritty and the romance is steamy.
Storytelling that is told with a passion.

Pub Date 12 Jan 2021
I was given a complimentary copy of this book. Thank you.
All opinions are my own.

This is a wonderful historical romance with the added twist of some espionage. The romance was steamy, the characters were well developed, and the plot kept my interested throughout. The only that slightly bothered me was I hate it when authors write in the accents because it gives me a headache!
Overall, a vey good read and I recommend!