Thank you to #NetGalley & Kelley Armstrong for the ARC. I couldn’t wait to read the follow up and Ms. Armstrong did not disappoint. I love how she weaves in unexpected twists and gives glimpse into the coming and goings of the time period to keep the reader engaged. Building upon the 1st in the series with additional murders to solve and trying to find a way home. The crime spree evidence is pointing closer to her employer’s family. As Mallory is still trapped in a past and body that is not her own, with Duncan’s new awareness, she is now able to work somewhat more freely as his mortuary assistant. Victorian Scotland, poisonous murders begging to be solved & a slight bit of romance….just brilliant! I’m looking forward to the next in the series! I’d love to see this as a movie or miniseries too!

Book 20 for 2023 is The Poisoner's Ring, A Rip Through Time Novel, by Kelley Armstrong
I absolutely love Kelley Armstrong's books. She writes across many genres and is incapable of writing a book that doesn't immediately suck me in.
This is the second book in her A Rip Through Time series. While each story is a stand-alone, you will get much more out of the second if you read them in order.
This is a somewhat closed-door who-done-it. Victims are falling left and right seemingly orchestrated by a single perpetrator. One of the victims has ties to Dr. Grey and Isla, making this case personal.
Mallory works with Grey to solve the case bringing her futuristic detective skills to the 1800s murder case with twists and turns and heart stopping action throughout. A fantastic addition to this new series. 5 stars.

#bookreview #2023 #victoriancrime #timetravel #fivestars #poison #netgalley

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The Poisoner’s Ring is the second in a series about a time traveling modern detective. This novel takes off from the ending of the previous one and would probably be best read in order of the series. Modern day detective, Mallory Atkinson’s consciousness is still duck in Victorian maid, Catriona Mitchell’s body. Slacking on her maid responsibilities, Mallory is still pursuing cases with Dr. Gray, the latest being a set of poisonings that seem to link to a ring. The men’s wives are being charged and Gray’s own sister is accused of killing her husband. Mallory struggles to bring the knowledge from the twenty-first century to the investigation in Victorian Scotland but she’s just the woman for the job. The case will take Mallory and Gray through dark parts of the city on a case that has personal stakes for Gray and is way more complicated than it appeared. The characters are great and the mystery is riveting for another great read by Kelley Armstrong. My voluntary, unbiased review is based upon a review copy from NetGalley.

The Poisoner’s Ring is a wonderfully fun, cozy historical mystery with a splash of time travel.  I think I enjoyed this one even more than the first book in this series, A Rip Through Time.

Mallory is a modern-day homicide detective from Canada who falls back in time to Victorian era Scotland, where she lands in the body of a maid.  Her employers, a doctor/undertaker named Grey and his sister Isla, a chemist, know Mallory’s secret, and the three of them solve mysteries together. 

The Poisoner’s Ring involves Mallory, Grey, and Isla investigating a possible poison ring, where women are accused of poisoning their husbands.  When Grey and Isla’s sister Annis’s husband is murdered, they have a personal connection to the case.

This book is just so much fun.  Mallory’s a witty, compassionate character and her fascination with police work in the Victorian age (and her modern commentary on it) is such a pleasure to get lost in.  The supporting characters are all memorable and interesting (I love Annis!) and the female characters in particular are all strong in different ways.

The poisoning mystery had me guessing throughout, and the atmosphere completely immersed me in Victorian-era Edinburgh.  This was such a great read on a cold, rainy evening.

Armstrong is one of my favourite writers and this is possibly my favourite series since her Otherworld books.  I love the mix of strong characters, humour, suspense, and historical trivia. There's also some social commentary woven in around gender and race in the historical and modern societies.

This book can stand alone (there’s enough explanation at the beginning that a new reader won’t be lost), but since book one is so fun, I do recommend starting there.

Thank you to Netgalley and Minotaur Books / St. Martin’s Press for my review copy of this book.

Think Quantum Leap not Outlander and this time travel series is quite exciting!
Second in the series, A Rip Trough Time, set in Edinburg, Scotland. Mallory Mitchell has convinced most people the personality change in Catriona is a result of her head injury. Those is the household know it is because she is no longer Catriona living in the body of a 19 year old housemaid, but 30 year old Vancouver BC Police officer, Mallory, visiting Scotland in 2019 who has arrived through a rip in time.

Working with Dr. Duncan Gray and his sister Isla in their household is providing everyone a look at another time period. This time tracking the killer of 4 men who were poisoned with a new 'element', thallium, mistakenly labelled arsenic. The twists and turns combined with society's attitudes towards women and non-white people makes this a fascinating read. When Mallory uses modern terms and language it opens the reader to being able to chuckle at the responses. Getting herself out of trouble is a constant challenge.

I am looking forward to book 3! Will Mallory ever get home? Will she want to get home or is Duncan Gray too interesting to leave behind?

Mallory is back with this all new adventure. This book was everything I was hoping for. I loved being able to learn more about Duncan and his family and the development of Duncan and Mallory's relationship.

This is the second book in the series. Mallory and Duncan team up with the local police to try and find out who has murdered four people. Just when I thought I had it figured out, there's a twist I did not expect.

Is the posioners ring real, or is it just a myth?

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this arc.

Anything by Kelley Armstrong is always incredible, and I have read and reviewed a number of her other books and series for my work, but the "Rip Through Time" series is truly a stand-out, an award-winning combination of historical fiction, mystery, and time travel, with the tiniest hint of romance that I foresee blooming into something larger later in the series.

This is a strong followup to the first book in the series, "A Rip Through Time," and my only complaint is that I wish it went longer, as I did not want it to end. I very much look forward to the next!

Told in first person by Mallory, this story picks up about a month after the events of the first book in the series. There’s a quick reminder of the events and characters from the former, but I recommend that you read A Rip Through Time first because the events that led to a modern Canadian detective investigating a murder in 1869 Scotland may give you a clearer vision into Mallory’s character and the various relationships between the characters, namely Gray and his household, family members, friends and foes.

We’re immediately thrown into an investigation involving a suspicious poison ring, women killing their loved ones with a provided poison, namely wives killing husbands and benefiting from their deaths. Gray’s older sister quickly gets caught up in the accusations.

I enjoyed the mystery and getting to know more of Gray’s immediate family. I love the repartee between Gray and Mallory as well as her relationship with his sister Isla. Adding the prickly Annis to the situation raised the stakes in Mallory’s precarious situation. Watching Mallory still learning to navigate all the differences between our time and theirs is still entertaining. Other than Mallory’s modern way of tackling things, there’s little to no progress on the time travel front in this installment.

Recommended to historical mystery lovers with a penchant for Victorian Scotland.

Thank you to Netgalley and Minotaur Books for a copy provided for an honest review.

I loved "A Rip in Time" and was thrilled to get an ARC of the sequel "The Poisoner's Ring" which continues the story of Mallory who has traveled back in time to victorian Scotland. I enjoyed all the period details as well as the well-crafted mystery. Well done. Given the ending, I assume there will be a third installment in this series. I can't wait!

I absolutely loved the first book in this series "A Rip through time" so was beyond excited to be able to read book #2.
The Poisoner's Ring is about present-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinsons who finds herself back in time 150 years in the body of a Victorian maid.

I did really like the first book of the series, but found it slow at times since so much of the setting, the characters, and the fact of time travel needed to be introduced. With all of this set-up out in book 1, the plot and the story in The Poisoner's Ring moved much quicker and I could not put this book down! There's a new murder to be investigated, that of men being poisoned and many of their wives being blamed, including Dr. Duncan Gray's sister, and many new and old characters to get to know!

Mallory was just as funny and relatable in this book as she was in the first. Her struggles to adapting to life in the 1860's and acting "normal" felt realistic and always so much fun to read. Duncan was once again a delight and I love seeing him and Mallory interact and work together to solve the case. I loved all the witty and intelligent characters and the mystery that kept me guessing! I can't wait to see what happens next in book 3!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books. & NetGalley for allowing me to read this book

Man, was I excited to receive this! (Not a big fan of the cover, though.)

I STILL love this series--just know it's still 90% mystery, not even 10% romance--what's developing between Mallory and Gray is a VERY slow build. We'll see what happens in a third book. (Please tell me there will be a third book.)

You can say that Gray, Isla, and Duncan still accepting that Catriona (who previously was known as the conniving little bitch of a housemaid) is now time-traveling Mallory to be a little far-fetched, but I still feel it's possible since they are a little more open-minded, being judged by society themselves. Also--they genuinely want to solve crimes, and they'll use all the help they can get. Still, I appreciate Mallory not being infallible despite all her knowledge and experience.

The world-building details are rich, the mystery keeps you guessing till the end. A few more characters have been added and have started their development (like Gray and Isla's sister, Annis), while Gray, Isla and Duncan are more and more rendered.

Can't wait for the next one!

The second book in the series A Rip Through Time by Kelly Armstrong, this book delivered just as strongly as the first in the series. The characters are well thought out, and even though there are quite a few characters added throughout the story, they're each written well with their own distinct personalities. I loved how Mallory, even though from the future so to speak, is fitting in well with the people around her. I especially love the relationship she and Duncan are forming, both personally and professionally. Her relationship with Isla is strongly firming up to be a 'best friends' scenario. The world building in this series is fabulous! I love how Mallory tells what the scene looks like in the future as she's seeing it in her time lapse form, 150 years earlier. I am hoping there's a third book coming along at some time in the near future. I loved the cover, it spoke exactly of what the book genre represents. Mysterious! I am giving this 4 stars. The only little, teeny tiny con I can think of is that sometimes Mallory seems to be pushing the thoughts and feelings of the people of her time era instead of allowing the era she's in to have it's own special place. Otherwise, my enjoyment level is high and Kelley Armstrong is fast becoming a favorite author!
Thank you to NetGalley, Kelley Armstrong and Minotaur books for this arc version in exchange for my honest opinion.

My overall thoughts:

The Poisoner's Ring is not as good as A Rip Through Time for a few reasons. The first being that the subplot of time travel/going back home is only briefly touched upon, which given the role it played in the first book is unfortunate and kind of odd when you think about it. The second reason is that the pacing is uneven and there are certain sections that are just really slow moving. I felt like it could have definitely been edited down. Additionally the murder mystery wasn't super exciting to me and the big reveal felt just kind of meh. Lastly, as another reviewer mentioned, Mallory's increased usage of contemporary slang, especially in front of people, was odd.

Despite these issues, there were aspects of the book that I loved. The main characters, of course, are number one. Mallory, Duncan, and basically everyone.... I loved them and I even enjoyed the newcomers as well. I also think the scenes with Mallory and Duncan are great and definitely wanted more of those. The writing itself was great as well.

All in all, it was an entertaining read and I overall was excited to return to the main characters from A Rip Through Time. While not as good as the first book, it was engaging enough that I will definitely make an effort to read the next book in the series.

The Poisoner's Ring is the second novel in A Rip Through Time series. It follows Mallory, a modern day homicide detective as she accidentally travels back in time to Victorian Scotland. In this book, Mallory moves from being a maid to working as her boss' assistant/investigator in his Undertaking business, trying to solve the mysterious poisonings happening in Edinburgh.

The characters are well developed and Armstrong does a great job bringing Edinburgh to life. I loved the tiny spark of romance as well. The mystery was well written too. I didn't know what was going to happen next and I was unable to solve the mystery myself until the end.

My only critique is that I found it just a touch too long. She could have removed one or two of the dramatic events in the book and it would have been the perfect length.

Otherwise, I highly recommend this book if you're into mysteries, time travel and the Victorian era.

I enjoyed this book a little more than the first one, I liked that the secrets were out in the open and we just got to enjoy the characters solving a mystery. The mystery in this book was really well done and I did not know for sure who the killer was until the end. I looked forward to all of the interactions between Mallory, Dr. Gray, McCreadie, and Isla. I hope their relationships progress some more in the next book.
I do wish Mallory would stop bringing up things from the future just to have the others not seem interested in it at all, as silly as it sounds this is what I have a hard time believing. I also would like Mallory not to seem so judgmental about people in the 1800's, it's like she thinks they are all bad people if they don't think like people do from her modern time.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the first in the series. This was a great mystery book, and if you haven't read A Rip Through Time yet you should get it now, and jump straight into The Poisoner's Ring when you are done.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for letting me read and review this book. I had a wonderful time with this one. It combined all the elements I craved. A twisty murder mystery in a gothic setting with characters I can’t help but root for. I love all the budding/developing relationships in this one that the author continued from the first book. I loved watching Gray and Mallory skirt around one another more than I expected. A flirtation that fits so well in the time period the novel is set and even now. It was wonderful and I will happily read many many more books set in this universe. Exploring this world and its lovely characters.

1869, amateur-sleuth, class-consciousness, detective, Edinburgh Scotland, family, family-drama, family-dynamics, fiction, historical, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-setting, historical-urban-fantasy, history-and-culture, law-enforcement, multiple-murder, murder-investigation, mystery, person-of-color, poisons, read, situational-humor, suspense, thriller, time-travel, unputdownable*****

The publisher's blurb is a marvelous hook. Mallory is a 21st-century Canadian detective living in the place of a 19th century housemaid in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is assistant to a local doctor whose half siblings are both moneyed and irascible. His eldest sister grudgingly asks for his help in clearing her of an impending charge of murdering her husband in a time where there seems to be someone providing some women with a poison to dispatch their husbands. But. Did this man die of poison or was it a possible locked-room murder. Wonderful twists, red herrings, and more!
This can't be an unbiased review because I love so much of this author's imaginative writing.
I requested and received an EARC from St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books via NetGalley. Thank you!

Canadian author

Still having mixed feelings about this series, mainly a few problems with Mallory’s superhuman perception, her constant need to describe things as “shitty,” and how accepting the other characters are of everything she says. But I thought the mystery was really good—I didn’t come close to figuring it out until I was almost at the end. It felt like there was more historical detail this time around too, and I liked that. The author mentioned in the acknowledgements that she had gotten some things wrong in the first book, and some folks had set her straight.

So, Mallory. I’m not sure I’m convinced about how quickly she’s got everyone’s number. I know reading people is supposed to be one of her strengths, but it comes across almost as a superpower. She also makes a lot of modern pronouncements about things that Duncan, Isla, and McCready just seem to accept, I guess because she’s from the future? The characters who are in on her secret are open-minded types, true, but they’re still products of another time and culture—I would expect a little more pushback against some of what Mallory says, even with that knowledge.

That said, I do like the characters, even Mallory when she’s not being obnoxious. I thought maybe there would be some love stuff in this one, but alas, there are still only hints. Let’s get some smoochies going already, lady! Except then Mallory would overthink them and then she’d force a very modern conversation on Duncan about them, and…I don’t know, never mind.

No, just kidding. I for sure want smoochies. And Isla and McCready need to get busy too.

I’m curious where this will go with the time travel angle. I’m guessing something will happen in the next book that will clue us in to what happened in Mallory’s time after the switcheroo. I don’t know how many books are planned for this series, but I don’t think that aspect can be left hanging for much longer.

3.5 stars rounded up 🌟

Last year I read A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong, the first in this series, and I rather enjoyed it, so I was happy to be able to read the sequel, The Poisoner's Ring. The premise of this series is that a 21st-century homicide detective, Mallory Atkinson, finds herself transported back to Victorian-era Edinburgh, with no idea how to return to her time period. While trapped in the body of Catriona—the housemaid to the medical examiner, Dr. Duncan Gray, a proponent of early forensic methods—Mallory finds herself helping Dr. Gray solve murders as she tries to think of a way to return to her life.

I can't reveal too much, since this is a sequel, but I will say the central mystery in this second novel involves Dr. Gray's half-sister, Annis, who is suspected of murder after her husband dies of poisoning. The police believe this murder may be connected to other poisoning deaths around the city, so Mallory, Duncan, Duncan's chemist sister Isla, and their childhood friend Detective McCreadie must work together to figure out who is truly behind the recent murder spree. If not, Annis may be sent to the gallows.

The mystery of this novel was overall intriguing, and I enjoyed it. I love the characters of Dr. Gray, Isla, and Detective McCreadie, and I will probably continue this series to find out more about Duncan's past (I'm still hoping we might discover more about his mysterious biological mother, which was teased in the first novel) and see if Isla and McCreadie will ever become anything more than friends.

As for Mallory, she's the main character, but I don't connect with her like I think I should, and while reading this book, I spent a lot of time reflecting on why that was. I think the best way I can explain it is this: Mallory, to me, doesn't feel flawed enough. The author clearly wants us to view her as this intelligent and enlightened 21st-century woman, here to help these Victorian detectives with her courage, determination, and modern-day knowledge, but...what is she getting out of the deal? What have her experiences in the past taught her about herself?

In any story, the main character needs to have a goal they want to achieve, a flaw they need to overcome, or something missing in their life that they'll find over the course of their adventures. I don't think Mallory has that. Yes, she wants to get back to the 21st century, but, to be honest, she doesn't think about her 21st-century life all that much. We get occasional mentions of the family she's left behind, but she doesn't often get emotional missing them, and when she does, it passes quickly. I wish Mallory had a flaw she needed to overcome and her time in the past could help her with. This would make her feel more real and make me like her more.

There's one other thing about this book that bothered me, and it's something I noticed in the first book too. The author is clearly a progressive, and Duncan, Isla, and McCreadie are probably the most tolerant and socially-conscious people you'd ever met in Victorian Edinburgh. This, in itself, isn't really a problem. I think it's a delicate balance when writing historical fiction because you want to be true to the time period, but also if your main heroes held the same beliefs as many people in the 1800s, your modern readers would understandably not sympathize with them. The historical characters' sophisticated understanding of things like gender identity and sexuality doesn't bother me, because as a 21st-century liberal, I don't want to root for bigots, but Mallory's attitude towards people in the past does bother me.

Too often, I think there's a judgmental tone in her narration towards Victorian society and how "backward" it is, when in reality, people in the past had the same emotions and human experiences as us. It's easy to look on them with disapproval since we know more now, but if humanity is still around in a few centuries, they will probably look at us wondering why we didn't know better about certain things. The author also often inserts 21st-century progressive talking points into Mallory's narration when they're not relevant. I think it's because she wants the readers to think of Mallory as particularly enlightened and socially aware, but she's often inserting statements that have very little to do with the plot of the story to achieve that goal, so it feels like she's reaching for a moral "win."

I love it when historical fiction novels comment on the social issues present both in the past and today. These are important things to discuss and modern-day readers can relate to struggling against racism or the patriarchy. I love reading about Dr. Gray's experience being a mixed-race man in the 1860s, Isla's efforts to be taken seriously as a scientist despite her gender, and McCreadie's struggles being an honorable man working for an often corrupt institution, because those aspects are integral to the plot whilst also touching on important social issues. Mallory's sidebar comments aren't relevant to the plot, so it feels unnecessary.

Would I keep reading this series? Probably, yes, but it's the side characters' storylines I want to keep reading about. They're the ones I'm genuinely invested in and their stories are the highlights of these books for me.

This continues the store of Mallory and Dr Grey as they explore their new situation of the knowledge she is from the future. With a new murder spree and the possibility that it might hit closer to home than they expected, this novel has many great twists and turns. Kelley Armstrong once again creates a story where the characters keep pulling you in and you become invested in their progress and relationships. I hope there will be another installment of this series as it is becoming a new favourite of mine!