#kjc

Zebedee is a fantastic lead and I’m glad to have been in his head the whole time. He knows a lot about gothic novels but is a bit bad at life. He has a web of complex relationships- he’s got a difficult family life, he’s lost his job at the start of the book, and the relative that summoned him is employing the love of his life as an assistant. Oh, and the love of his life has not forgiven or forgotten their previous encounters. I admire that Zeb as a character always chooses deliberately to be kind and decent, and take the most charitable way to understand others. This deep empathy really endears him to the reader, and I admire that KJ makes it clear that this is never an easy choice.

Another thing that I admire about Zeb is that KJ has thought carefully about how to put neurodivergence rep into a historical novel without being ahistoric but also without being clunky in the way ADHD is presented. I appreciated her note regarding the multiple sensitivity readers used - this is a great thing for authors to do, and I would love more of them to be open about it. KJ has never shied away from presenting historical realities while still writing glorious and sensitive LGBT relationships, and this holds true for the representation here. 

The romance? Gideon and Zeb are a second-chance pair, but despite Gideon’s demeanour the first time he appears on the page you long for him to come back as it’s so clear how Zeb feels. It feels emotionally mature in the way they come together and are able to reflect on the past- even though they are in the middle of a gothic whodunnit! I will admit to being semi-biased, as I love hotmess/competent and also the sex scenes were Up My Alley. 

But what about this gothic murder mystery? I am less experienced with the gothic myself, so if you’re a massive gothic fan, I can’t help. I thought the setting was glorious. I am still thinking about the description of the house’s library- constellations on the ceiling, green leather armchairs, oak shelves and a spiral staircase in the middle, if you were wondering - the fact it belonged to a crazy old gothic novel writer notwithstanding. Every element of the house and garden works carefully with the plot of the book, and while Zeb never knows where he’s going, I as the reader certainly had a fully realised concept of the house in my head.

For the mystery, I think something KJ does very well is play with the victim-criminal-murderer dynamic. Sometimes you start believing a character is one thing, and then the scene changes, and they are suddenly very different. Transformation and nothing being as it seems are clear themes here, but also power and who holds it. 

It’s a very clever, tongue-in-cheek take on both gothic and murder mystery- I do really need to go back and see if I can find some penny dreadful style gothic pulp; if nothing else, just because KJ clearly had so much fun coming up with titles for in-universe gothic novels!