I really enjoyed this Victorian era set YA mystery with a touch of magic (or in the main character's case, no magic, but…)
Elsie Camden is a child when she casually touches the fire ward on the workhouse and breaks it, because that's what she is, that's what she does. She's a spellbreaker, capable of unraveling even the most complicated spells, although she doesn't know that yet.
But the workhouse where she and the other orphans live and work burns to the ground. She finds herself with no options, nowhere to go, nowhere to live, and is scooped from the cold street by a benefactress who belongs to a society Elsie calls "The Cowls." In return for taking her in, they send her cryptic messages, asking her to lift and unravel spells so they can right wrongs, put an end to injustices, and free servants being unfairly made to work.
She's fulfilled and happy to oblige, working for a minor spellcaster Ogden, until a dashingly handsome wizard in the making (although he hasn't passed his trials yet) Bacchus Kelsey grips her hand on the doorknob The Cowls have asked her to lift the ward on, twice.
Sparks fly, of the romantic sort, but they are not acknowledged by either party. Instead, Bacchus threatens to expose Elsie if she doesn't help him lift some spells in the Duke of Kent's estate, making his work of casting new ones a bit easier. Because in Elsie and Bacchus' England, magic wielders are highly regulated, and an unregistered spellbreaker like Elsie, once exposed, could be sentenced to death.
Bacchus is keeping a secret of his own, one he doesn't even know he has, but Elsie can sense, and she simply must put her hand on his chest to figure it out. There she finds not one but two spells, masterfully laid, one over the other. One of healing, the other of the spirit, and neither she nor Bacchus know what purpose it serves or who put it there.
In the meantime, Elsie begins to put together the times and dates of some gruesome, grisly murders of wizards. They eerily coincide with The Cowls' requests for her to lift spells on doors of houses and places of work and carriages and whatnot, and suddenly she begins to suspect, the wizards have all been murdered -- with her spellbreaking paving the path -- for their spell books.
I won't spoil how it ends, but I will be tracking down book 2, you can rest assured of that! This was a great Victorian fantasy murder mystery! Delightfully done and a joy to read.
I was hooked after the first book, and I loved this one! It's a very satisfactory conclusion to this Victorian-with-a-hint-of-magic Romance, and I don't normally like Romances!
Elise Camden does not get away with being an unregistered spellbreaker after all. She ends up in jail. And Bacchus comes to her rescue with a most uncomfortable save -- by telling the magistrate they are engaged to be married!
He really does want to marry her. In fact he finds her spell-binding, but she's worried he's doing it solely out of obligation, because she broke the siphoning spell that was sapping all his strength in the first book.
And, of course, this time they know the villain they're fighting -- Master Merton. She's gathering more opuses, spellbooks from the spellcasters she's still killing, in a hunt for one specific spell. But what is it? What does Master Merton really want?
Elsie, Bacchus, Ogden and her brother (who turns up when he reads the engagement announcement in the papers), get the mysterious American spellcaster from the first book to finally talk to them.
By the time Elsie figures out the spell Master Merton's hunting, it's terrifying. But she's got a spell of her own in her bodice that no one knows about, and she'll wait until the perfect moment to use it.
I won't spoil the ending, just know there's an HEA and a honeymoon in Barbados to look forward to!
Love the conclusion to this romantic duology. Enjoy.
