I do not mind a little wilfulness in a woman. A little waywardness. It would settle down with a little domesticity. The right home. I’m sure you do not take after your mother.
No Life for a Lady
by Hannah Dolby
Genre: Historical Fiction
About: Violet's mother went missing ten years ago, and ever since that day Violet hasn't been able to move on. At 28-years-old she's seen in Hastings as a spinster. Only this spinster wants to do more with her life. She wants to find her mother, find employment, find anything but a husband. But when she goes about hiring a private detective, she discovers just how ignorant she's been all of these years.
Thoughts
The characters are really fantastic in this book. Violet is endearing and I loved her interactions with Mr Blackthorn, especially her outbursts that gives us the charity for drunken animals. And on the opposite end of the scale, Mr Knight crawls off the page and infuriates with every condescension. I also thought the father was given interesting depth - he's both villainous and pitiful. There were just so many characters that did unexpected things and provoked a reaction from me as I listened. All of the cases Violet works on give us some new interesting person and I got the feeling that there were more stories to be had in the Hastings community. Things don't feel quite wrapped up in the way that these types of stories tend to be. It isn't exactly as if I need a sequel, but I feel like life is continuing to happen for Violet and all the people we've met and I love that the author was able to create such vibrancy in her world.
The pace is a little slow for even a cosy mystery. One thing I really didn't like was the way scenes would follow each other so orderly. Violet would arrange to meet a character and then the next scene would be of that meeting. Nothing else would happen in the mean time. Or conversations would repeat themselves. The dynamic between Violet and Mr Knight, for example, was a series of the same type of conversation. Even meeting Mr Blackthorn followed a series of scenes of Violet simply going to his shop, day after day, with nothing else happening in between these meetings. We were discovering things, and forming new relationships, but it felt like walking down a straight line with no mis-directions. In a mystery, I want to be thrown about a bit.
And then the ending. I didn't dislike it but it was a little anti-climatic for me. Villains such as Mr Knight or the doctor suitor become caricatures and there's a strange sense at the end that ten years really does seem too long of a time for nothing to have happened in between. Violet is obsessed with finding her mother but the story starts ten years after she's missing and it just makes you wonder why was that necessary? If anything it would have made the ending and the story overall make more sense if it had been anywhere from three to five years.
Overall, this was a fun read. Dolby does a great job showing the limitations put on unmarried women in the 1890s, while giving Violet that spark to push the boundaries and flourish. It’s romance, mystery and historical fiction all rolled into one.
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