According to the Evil Monkey's guide to creative writing we should be more critical in our reading of book reviews and reviewing.

Okay, I'll accept that. Yes, people tend to be nice when talking about other people's books. I mean, if it's published, it can't be that bad, right? Somebody liked it. Hmmm...okay, maybe not.

So I've tried to take that into consideration in the next books I crack open.

So anyway, Her Royal Spyness which is a book about a distant cousin of the King in London in the 1930's.

I picked this up because it was listed as one of the "books other people bought" on the Deanna Raybourn page (I'm eagerly awaiting her next installment).

So, it was....okay. Not terrible, but it didn't spark anything in me. I found that the book tended to repeat certain lines too much for my taste "Dishonor before death" or "Rannochs don't run from danger" or "The high class accent low class people put on", etc.

The romance didn't involve enough time with the hero and the heroine actually in the same place at the same time for me. And while the story itself is amusing, as is the way the characters in the story handle high class English society, I missed the actual delving into true human frailties and emotions that I found in Silent in the Sanctuary .

So I give it a rating of so-so. Light, amusing reading, but nothing grabbed me.