The Grand Tour: or The Purloined Coronation Regalia

I made some reading notes on the first part of the book, then I just read.
So, here are the notes for the first part, no comment about the rest of it :-D
Except that it is readable enough. I did finish it and started the next one.


I have huge problems with this.

The biggest problem I have is that upon marrying, Kate and Cecelia turn into spineless idiots and James and Thomas into pretentious a-holes. I can't separate these couples from each other. Nobody has a clear personality. And nobody has the personality they had in the previous book. I was ready to forgive and oversee a lot in the first book, but this one... sigh

Nobody writes a diary like that. Also, “you know how important the utmost secrecy is”, and she goes and writes it word by word in her diary. That anyone could take and read.
I really wish they had skipped the epistolary style for this book.

Frankly, I'm p'd off with the knitting code. It feels like she stole it from me, and now I can't use it, even though we probably got it from the same sources :-D
Nevertheless, it might take only a couple of hours to learn to knit, but getting the equipment and materials in the middle of nowhere, not so easy. Learning to knit a code, not so easy. Learning to read a code, not so easy. Besides, it might seem like a good idea to use dropped stitches as code, but dropped stitches has the nasty tendency to not stay orderly dropped, and languages have the nasty tendency to form patterns... so if you have a pattern, people are starting to suspect things. If you have a group of people exchanging terribly badly knitted swatches, people are starting to suspect things. sigh
So, a good idea (absolutely amazingly great, because I got it, too :-D), but sloppily thought.
But, I suppose, most people don't know enough about knitting to see the weakness of it.

“They are fallen women, you mean? Soiled doves?” Cecy prompted. “I know just what you mean—”

too many things are arranged to work so tht they can tell the story. sloppy.

The bottle is obviously in Lady Sylvia's riticule and gets stolen. Of course. She wouldn't put it in her pocket. Yes, they had pockets. More than we do. But of course she wouldn't, because she needed to get it stolen.

Why would the French government (or Paris' government) hire an Englishman to be in charge of a major criminal investigation? Or anything? Especially just a few years after a war between France and England? And isn't it so wonderful he happens to be Thomas and James' old friend! sigh
And how can he just drag his two army buddies through a crime scene?

And what does any of these people have to do with any of this? I would make Lady Sylvia have a visit by a very distinguished and sharp French gentleman who tells her in no uncertain terms to back off French business and if she won't, she and her family will be kindly but determinedly escorted back to Calais and a ship with all their belongings to never be welcome in France again. Wars have started for less interference.

I don't get the logic. Why would they be upset because he hired a bodyguard? Why would he try to pass the bodyguard as a valet? Why not both? I mean THEY WERE ALMOST KILLED JUST A LITTLE WHILE AGO!

It's so prejudiced. Stereotypical. It's like reading Katy's trip to Europe all over again. Puke.

“If we looked like something the cat dragged in, it must have been a very undiscriminating cat, indeed.”
LOL