A beautiful Disguise (The Imposters #1) by Roseanna M. White

  

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult, Christian Fiction
Genre: Romance, Clean Romance, Historical Romance, Mystery
Content: Clean

 

Left with an estate on the brink of bankruptcy after their father's death, Lady Marigold Fairfax and her brother open a private investigation firm marketed to the elite . . . to spy on the elite. Dubbed The Imposters, Ltd., their anonymous group soon becomes the go-to for the crème of society when they want answers delivered surreptitiously. But the many secrets Marigold learns about her peers pale in comparison to her shock when she and her brother are hired to investigate her best friend's father as a potential traitor.

Sir Merritt Livingstone has spent a decade serving the monarch in the most elite guard, but when pneumonia lands him behind a desk in the War Office Intelligence Division just as they're creating a new secret intelligence branch, he's intent on showing his worth. He suspects a man of leaking information to Germany as tensions mount between the two countries, but needs someone to help him prove it, so he turns to The Imposters, Ltd. No one knows who they are, but their results are beyond compare.

Lady Marigold is determined to discover the truth for her friend's sake, and she's more determined still to keep her heart from getting involved with this enigmatic new client . . . who can't possibly be as noble as he seems.

 

I was really looking forward to this new book by Roseanna M. White. After reading the description, I thought it sounded a lot like her Shadows Over England series with the spies, and I was kind of right. This one actually ended feeling like a mix of her Shadows Over England series and her Ladies of the Manor series, but it was also something different. This book had a unique mix of ideas that I feel like shouldn't have worked, but for some reason it did. 

The story pulled me in right from the beginning. It opens with the main character and her brother in a precarious situation, and it had me glued to the pages to see how they would get out of it. As I continued to read I did come to a point where I thought it may not work for me. For some reason I don't usually end up liking books that have a circus in them, and although this one doesn't exactly have a circus in it, it has circus-type elements to it, that in the beginning felt a bit implausible. Even so, I kept reading and this book just kept growing on me. I loved these characters, and the slow build romance paired with the mystery was right up my alley. In the end, I thought this was well worth the read and I had a hard time putting it down. This is the first book in a series and I'm looking forward to the next one!

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.