I enjoyed this quick read. This cozy mystery was just what I needed and was fast-paced for me. The characters were easy to relate to. I enjoyed the setting, which is always one of my favorite settings while reading mysteries.

A delicious and delightful tale. An agony columnist who reads a letter and decides to solve the mystery it entails. Intriguing.

Violet is, in many ways, the opposite of her extravagant, vivacious aunt, but they're about to have a secret in common. With no warning, Aunt Adelia sets off on a romantic getaway, leaving the mantle of "Miss Hermione," the advice columnist, behind for her niece. Violet's first task on the job is to respond to a repeat customer. While the woman's first letter to Miss Hermione was a run-of-the-mill plea for advice as a newly married woman, her latest message covers something much more sinister. Ivy is certain that someone is trying to kill her, and she has a few suspects in mind. Determined to offer her assistance, Violet takes the train to Essex only to discover that her correspondent is already dead. Some suggest Ivy fell from the bridge, while others think it was a suicide, brought on by the same madness that afflicted her mother. But no one speaks of murder.

Most of the investigation follows a tried and true mystery formula wherein Violet lies to and questions her suspects to draw out what happened. And that part was fine though not mind-blowing. It's her "scientific" pursuits that antagonized me. We see it in a scene where she arranges for a cart to speed by to see if it's possible to "stumble" in front of it or if a push is required. She aims to discover if what others claim was an accident in Ivy's past was actually a murder attempt as she feared. And like... How is this scientific? Or safe? Or in any way reasonable? There are a million variables, and her big question is: is it possible to stumble in front of a horsecart? Because like... yes. The answer is yes in the broadest sense, which is all we have here, anyway. So the experiment is useless, but we're presumably meant to be impressed by Violet's vaunted logic at work. During this demonstration, someone ironically tries to push Violet into the cart, ruining her experiment in a way that she actually takes as confirmation of her theory... Because if one girl can be pushed in front of a cart, so can another. Logic. To wrap up my comments on the mystery, ostensibly the main purpose of the book, POV chapters from Violet's sister Sephora add nothing to the story beyond a very obvious string of clues. It's ultimately a murder that's too easy to solve.

On a more concerning level, the author deals with topics of racism and colonialism in a weird, half-assed way. Violet grew up the daughter of a British foreign service official. She mentions that she largely lived an English life even though they were on foreign soil (she describes it as the "Far East" in the parlance of the time, and specifically talks about India and China). We learn that her father taught her to protect herself when they were out amongst the populace, and she's shocked to discover someone might need those skills of self-defense at the "center of civilization," aka England. Strike one. It turns out Violet was once engaged to an Indian man, but though her father didn't object to the match, the foreign service very much did. And all Violet has to say about this blatant racism is the tepid remark that "as intrepid as the British are, they are, for the most part, not bias-free." Strike two. She goes on to say that her lover's family also didn't approve, but she doesn't seem to comprehend the realities of the situation-- the power dynamics at play and their violent consequences. Add in that Violet's secret dream is to study the cultures she once lived alongside as part of Britain's imperial project, and it has the unfortunate flavor of voyeurism or appropriation. Strike three. She does try to correct another woman who makes assumptions about the so-called savagery of India, but that doesn't make Violet incapable of holding her own problematic mindset while thinking of herself as worldly and well-informed.

To wrap things up, the book offers us an unnecessary romantic side plot in the final hour. It's meant to be about the attraction of mutual intelligence, where Violet and the gentleman in question challenge each other, etc. blah, blah, blah. I couldn't make myself care about it. It's this whirlwind thing that comes out of nowhere, and it doesn't add anything to the book other than to give us the expected fictional outcome for a poor, unfashionable spinster protagonist.

This mystery is a quick read, but I don't think I gained anything from reading it. The mystery is obvious, the romance is unnoteworthy, and the author had nothing substantial to say about British imperialism though she presented it as if she had.

Violet, who lives as the spinster ward of her aunt along with her insipid half-sister, suddenly finds herself in charge of writing her aunt's advice column while said aunt runs away with her latest paramour. Violet doesn't feel up to the task but has no other choice, so she begins to write advice on topics she feels no surety about. One letter, in particular, makes her worry about the lady who wrote it and sends her into a series of investigations that lead her to discover a murder and the many secrets it was meant to hide.

It's an almost perfect cozy mystery with a dash of romance that balances the fun aspects of both genres with the serious topic of how awfully women were treated in the era. The only thing that keeps it from being perfect is the vapidly annoying half-sister Sephora and the chapters that we get to suffer through her perspective. I haven't encountered such an annoying heroine in a long time and hope to never do so again, which is a shame because I truly did enjoy Violet's story.

Overall, with the exception of a few chapters, this makes for a very interesting and engaging cozy mystery read with a character that you're happy to follow.

Very happy thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the great read!

Victorian era England, a queen sits on the throne, a widow. In her mourning, England mourns with her, and society becomes very focused on all things to do with mortality. A young woman newly married thinks she is being targeted for death writes to a newspaper advice column called Dear Hermione. Hermione, aka Aunt Adelia, answers. The young lady attempts the advice but writes again fervently asking for health because now she knows who is targeting her and she is very afraid. Adelia received the letter as she is on the way out the door to elope. She turns the letter and the running of her column over to her niece Violet.

Violet is shocked that Adelia writes a column and has no idea what advice to give a married woman. Violet is considered an old maid and she has never paid attention the Dear Hermione column at all. Violet looks at the postmark on the letter and decides to pay the letter writer a visit. It shouldn't be too hard to find a newly married young woman in a small rural village.

When Violet arrives the carriage driver knows where to find the young woman Violet is looking for....he takes her to the grave yard. The young lady has just died you see. Violet is horrified. Aunt Adelia said taking over the column would be a lark, it would be easy and now Violet is landed in the middle of a murder investigation.

You will be sucked in during chapter one and not be able to come up for breath until the book is done.

a fun cozy mystery indeed! well, as cozy as anything set in Victorian England can be. witty banter and comedy abound!

This was a fun read that was more complicated than I’d initially predicted. With a narrative structure that bounced between a few threads, it kept me engaged and allowed several characters to be substantially introduced and developed.

This is a delightful, cozy mystery which begins a series of Dear Miss Hermione Mysteries. The entertaining mystery takes place in 1885 London, England. When Aunt Adelia begins traipsing about with her new companion du jour, she leaves her two nieces, Violet and Sephora, in the care of Bunty, the housekeeper. Before she leaves, she entrusts her "secret" to her niece Violet that she is the eponymous scribe of the Dear Miss Hermione advice column. Violet is tasked with subbing in for her aunt in this anonymous role which she takes very seriously. Violet feels she needs to investigate when she receives a letter from "Ivy" who claims that someone is trying to kill her and asks Miss Hermione for help sending news clippings of "accidents". As Violet is busy trying ensure the safety of Ivy, she needs to keep her young and immature step-sister from stepping into a mess of her own.

The quest of an affluent young woman investigating a potential crime without a chaperone or adult supervision is reminiscent of the Enola Holmes series, the sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. Nancy Springer writes a fun series of the young spirited sister of the notable Holmes.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for allowing me access to read this digital book. My review is my honest and unbiased opinion. All comments are expressly my own.

This is the first book in what I hope to be long series. And I really hope book two comes out fast. I absolutely loved, this witty story and loved Violet, even though she is going to get herself into some trouble I can see.

Now I just have to patiently wait for the next book…sigh

I love cozy mysteries and historical fiction. This is a perfect blend of the two. Absolutely adore Violet and really enjoyed the story as well. This one is perfect for those who enjoy a strong female lead and entertaining story.

I sincerely appreciate the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

When I downloaded this ARC last year, I thought it was a debut novel, as well as the beginning of the Dear Miss Hermione series of historical mysteries. It turns out it’s only the first book published under this pseudonym.

The story is told in first person, past tense, mainly by our intrepid heroine, Miss Violet Manville, a woman of respectable birth and upbringing firmly set on the shelf, as she’s much closer to thirty than to twenty years at the beginning of the story. Her father having died the year prior, and her mother long before that, she and her much younger half-sister, also unmarried, have come back to London to live with their only relative, their paternal aunt.

Expecting, essentially, to remain unmarried and become her aunt’s companion, and for her sister to come out in society and make a brilliant match–as she’s a heiress in her own right, on her mother’s side–Violet’s worldview is shaken off its foundations when she learns, without ceremony, that her beloved aunt is leaving the country for an indeterminate period of time, and entrusting her, Violet, with writing the most popular advice column “in the Empire”.

Beware: Orientalism; mentions of mental illness and suicide; phonetic accents to indicate lower classes; copaganda.

Given the inauspicious beginning, one may believe that Violet’s aunt is careless and neglectful of her charges, but in fact, her confidence in Violet’s common sense and resourcefulness seems, at first blush, to be very well placed indeed. And there’s the added benefit of Bunty’s wisdom.

(Bunty, Aunt Adelia’s long time housekeeper, is a servant in the vein of Lord Peter’s Bunter, both devoted to her mistress, and by extension her nieces, and just the kind of solid and comforting fountain of helpfulness and know-how so prevalent in this kind of stories.)

Alas, Violet is what would be called headstrong were she as young as her sister: going forth without letting anyone know where or for how long, and putting herself in uncomfortable, if not outright dangerous situations, convinced she knows what she’s doing because she had “lived in the Far East with her dear Papa” and therefore can “take care of herself”. (The whiff of Orientalism in these passages is strong indeed.) I grant that she is fairly quick to come up with excuses for being where she shouldn’t; whether they are believable to her audience, however, is doubtful to me, plus she often gives away at least as much as she learns; her self-confidence and daring more often than not felt like feckless recklessness than anything else. And despite all of Violet’s assumed worldliness and the veneer of cynicism one would presume a well traveled woman of her years should have developed, she came across as entirely too credulous, accepting much, if not most, of what others told her, both about themselves and the very much dead Ivy.

I mentioned at the top that the book is narrated mainly from Violet’s point of view; there are a few chapters, however, narrated by her half-sister Sephora, and, well…

As far as Violet is concerned, her sister is too spoiled and vain to understand the danger of her position: Sephora will get full control of a sizable fortune in just a couple more years; with a head full of romantic nonsense as hers, she’s a ready-made target for any half-smart fortune hunter with a pretty enough face and address. And, unlike Ms Austen’s Georgiana Darcy, only a penniless older sister and a paternal aunt of small personal fortune and insignificant social standing stand between Sephora and disaster.

And Violet is not wrong. The chapters narrated by Sephora read much like the romantic imaginings of one Anne Shirley, lately of Green Gables; they are almost painful to read in first person narrative, to be honest. What works for a eleven year old voracious reader with unbridled imagination and starving for love, crosses over to secondhand embarrassment for me, when in the voice of a sixteen year old girl who considers herself a young woman capable of making adult decisions about the rest of her life.

Which is not to say that she’s badly written; quite the opposite: these passages prove that Violet sees her sister very clearly. And while there are a few moments there in which Sephora shows her potential to grow into a better version of herself, she has a long way to go, and not much time to do it.

All of which means that, in her aunt’s absence, Violet is dealing with her responsibilities as interim advice columnist, amateur murder investigator, and de facto parent to her much younger, much spoiled, and rather difficult younger sister; not an enviable position from any angle.

As Violet asks questions, past events come to light, making for several viable suspects in Ivy’s murder. The biggest problem for our novice sleuth, who has to rely entirely on after the fact testimonies, as it were, is to learn to strip away her own biases, not just about each potential suspect, but the motivations behind both their actions and their words, in order to separate fact from fancy.

After all, the crime was committed in a small town, with a fairly tight knit community, where all manner of conflicts and frictions lie beneath the placid surface of bucolic peace.And where, as it turns out, there have been other deaths in Willingdale that may be considered unnatural.

Beyond the sisters, everyone else is fairly two-dimensional. Bunty, in the tradition of the loyal servant of British literature, has no interiority; most of the other secondary characters, seen through Violet’s eyes, are by turns potential murderers or innocent bystanders, with very little middle ground; she never considers that people may lie for a multitude of reasons about a multitude of things.

The sense of time and place, on the other hand, were good: fog, pollution, poverty, class divisions, the friction between London and the countryside; the British colonies, still under the iron fist of the Empire, providing people with places to come from and places to go to; newspapers, as they existed during the Victorian era, and so on.

On balance, I liked the mystery aspect of the story quite a bit, in the sense that the answers to all the questions Violet poses are answered without leaving dangling threads, and because it’s essentially a fair play story: the clues are all laid out in the narrative. I did not care much for the structure of the story–did I mention that I found the Sephora sections painful? and I was less than pleased with the introduction of a key character a good three quarters of the way into the book–but Violet did manage to figure things out in the end.

Of Manners and Murder gets a 7.50 out of 10, and I’m making a note to read the second book in the series, the recently released Of Hoaxes and Homicide, soon.

Book 1 in a new series. Violet is assigned by her aunt to take over the duties of being in charge of a Dear Abby style section of the newspaper. When one of the first one she is given is from a previous letter, she does a bit of investigating and ends up going to the funeral of the woman who had feared for her life. Obviously, for good reason. Enjoyed this one, and look forward to reading the next in the series. And hopefully her silly sister gets a bit more smart. Highly recommend.

Super cute novel Love the characters in the setting. It’s an easy read, as well as an enjoyable one. I must have her all those that love cozy mysteries.

I couldn’t wait to dive into this one and I really enjoyed it! If you love historical cozy mysteries then Of Manners and Murder is for you! Violet is an intelligent and independent woman living in England in the late 1800s who takes over, not willingly at first, her aunt’s advice column. Since this is a cozy mystery you can bet she’ll read a letter from someone who’s about to be murdered! I loved the setting and Violet is bound to be a top favorite character for me this year. There are several suspects and not everyone is who they appear to be which adds a layer of complexity to the story. I’m anxiously awaiting the next book in this series!

Thank you Minotaur and NetGalley for the eARC of Of Manners and Murder! All opinions in this review are my own.

This is a great start to the new historical mystery series! I loved the Dear Miss Hermoine angle and I can't wait to see how that factors into future mysteries!

The mystery itself kept me guessing until the end! I liked how the author presented a list of suspects right from the beginning so you were already suspicious of certain characters. I liked how everything came together at the end of the novel.

However, I wasn't a huge fan of the cut scenes that followed Violet's sister Sephora. Luckily, it all makes sense by the end, but I liked Violet much more than her sister so the interspersed chapters were something to just get through in order to get back to the real mystery.

Overall, this is a quick cozy mystery and I am looking forward to reading the next book in this series!

Adelia runs an advice column called Dear Miss Hermione. One day Adelia quits her role as Miss Hermione and leaves her advice column to her niece Violet. As Violet starts to take over her role as Miss Hermione, a rich woman named Ivy asks her for help. She suspects her husband is planning to kill her. When Violet decides to investigate, she learns that Ivy has committed suicide. As Violet digs deeper, she realizes instead of a suicide, Ivy may have been murdered. Can Violet find out who murdered Ivy and why?

Violet was an amazing heroine. She was very resourceful and determined. She was a very competent sleuth. I also liked Violet's compassion and willingness to help others. Therefore, Violet made an engaging woman to root for.

The other main character is Violet’s sister, Sephora. I found her to be an insufferable character. She was very selfish and annoying. Therefore, I found her storyline to be very unnecessary. I wished that the novel focused solely on Violet and not Sephora. I still disliked her even after I finished the book.

Overall, this book is about secrets, sisterhood, and betrayal. I really liked all the characters and found them to be very compelling except for Sephora. There were a few times in which I thought the plot was a bit too far-fetched and unbelievable. It took me a while to get into because the story and the mystery both seemed silly. Yet, I had to let go of the story’s silliness in order for me to truly enjoy the novel. Thus, if you are willing to let go of common sense, this novel is very entertaining. I also found the romance to be unnecessary and should have been included in the next novel. Overall, it was a very engaging and fast-paced novel! I recommend this novel for The Lone Fox, Murder at Mallowen Hall, and Lady Helena Investigates!

Thank you, NetGalley, publishers, and Anastasia Hasting for gifting me a copy of Of Manners and Murder in return for my honest review.

3.5/5 stars

1885: London, England. When Violet's Aunt Adelia decides to abscond with her newest paramour, she leaves behind her role as the most popular Agony Aunt in London, "Miss Hermione," in Violet's hands. And of course, the first letter Violet receives is full, not of prissy pondering, but of portent. Ivy Armstrong is in need of help and fears for her life. But when Violet visits the village where the letters were posted, she finds that Ivy is already dead. She'll quickly discover that when you represent the best-loved Agony Aunt in Britain, both marauding husbands and murder are par for the course.

I would like to start out my review by sharing that I am a massive cozy mystery fan! I think that played against this book for me. There was nothing special here for me. If unlike me you haven't read a lot of cozy mysteries, especially Victorian cozies. but also a 3.5 out of 5 is still a really good rating for me!

With that out of the way, I want to share what I did like. Who doesn't love a strong no-nonsense female lead who sticks to her guns? I love strong female leads and this one does not disappoint. I also really enjoyed Anastasia Hastings's writing style and I thought it was very well written.

If you haven't read a lot of Victoriana era cozies then I would recommend this book to you!

Thank you St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for e-ARC of the book.

Aunt Adelia is away on an adventure with her new love interest and leaves her niece Violet with an important task - to be "Miss Hermione". It all looks easy - respond to letters and give smart advice until Violet receives a letter from Ivy. Ivy fears for her life and asks for help. Violet can't ignore it and decides to visit Ivy but she is too late - Ivy is dead.

This book was out of my comfort zone as I don't really like settings in the Victorian era. The style of writing corresponded to the time period. I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed it - characters, descriptions and the murder mystery.

I really enjoyed this Agatha Christie type book! Set back in the 1800s London, Miss Hermione is what we’d now call an advice columnist who gets mixed up in a suspected murder! I loved trying to figure out what happened and trying to connect all the storylines. I really liked the main character as well. In the end, the ‘whodunnit’ was a little predictable, but the getting there and ‘why’ behind it was something I didn’t see coming. Overall, this was a good cozy mystery!

I enjoyed this, but it does slow down a bit after the whirlwind of the beginning. There is a lot of information gathered about the list of suspects and once you get past the halfway point it picks up again.

Violet is thrust into the role of Aunt Hermione by her Aunt Adelia. Aunt Hermione is the most popular Aunt Agony in all of London, Aunt Adelia has secretly filled this role but is leaving it in her niece Violet's hands so that she can take off with her newest paramour.

The first letter she receives immediately grabs her attention. Ivy Armstrong needs help and fears for her life. When Violet travels to the village where the letters were mailed, she discovers that Ivy is already dead.

Using the information Ivy sent to Aunt Hermione, Violet sets out to discover what really happened to Ivy.

Thank you so much to the author and St. Martins Press for this ARC to review.