Review: And Only To Deceive by Tasha Alexander

And Only To Deceive bills itself as a novel of suspense, but it’s much more. The editor and marketing department must have had a hard time deciding where to put it. It’s set in Victorian England for a big chunk of the book, so that would make it a Historical. There’s a mystery in this, more than suspense, though there’s suspense too. There’s also romance. But most of all there’s the heroine’s journey, which would make it a historical women’s fiction with suspense (or mystery).

That’s a lot for one story, but Tasha Alexander does it all beautifully in this first Lady Emily story. A young widow, Emily is not mourning her husband, Phillip, the Viscount Ashton, who was killed in a hunting expedition in Africa. She only married him to get away from her controlling mother, and is surprised when his best friend, Colin Hargreaves, tells her how much Phillip loved her.

He piques her interest in Phillip, and she discovers he had a deep love of Grecian antiquities and donated pieces to the British Museum. She goes there to learn about Phillip and the period. She also finds Phillip’s journals and starts to know and admire him. Even to love him.

She realizes there’s something wrong with the antiquities. Someone searches Phillip’s papers. Two men court her. A friend, an older Parisian woman who lives life her way, gives Emily the impetus to question her role in society.

The series has been compared to books by Jane Austen, Elizabeth Peters, Anne Perry and Deanna Raybourn. What they have in common is wonderful writing, terrific characters and a great story. Like the other authors, Alexander writes in a style that fits the elegance of the era, with the addition of an irony that fits Emily’s voice.

There are three other Lady Emily books out, and I plan on reading all of them.