Are you looking for a sex, crime, and murder mystery set in Regency England? I'm afraid you haven't found it. All that dates the book's story is the mention of 1819 at the beginning of the first chapter. After that, it just is a generic sex and crime story. Stone Devil Duke by K. J. Jackson is showing up major defects in writing without doing at least some minimal research.
Putting the date of 1819 at the beginning of the story doesn't make it a Regency story. It's just a story where they use coaches instead of cars. Generic coaches at that, she doesn't know what kind of coaches were in use or in fashion at the time. The same goes for fashion, fans (the air fanning type, not the screeching teen type), and hair. Snuff boxes got lost in writing, and the bad habit of some people returning from the war of actually smoking tobacco gets no mention. And I'm sure she has no clue which war she referred to in her story.
The dialogue is lively but 21st century speech; and that includes swearwords that were either not used by ladies and in front of them, or were not even known at the time. And when someone calls a Duchess 'duchess' to her face, I have to cringe. When that someone is a servant; oh well, no clue is no clue, why make it any worse by going on about it.
The sex part is as enticing as Fifty Shades of Grey, meaningless, boring, and going fast forward recommended. The mystery part starts off well, but after about two chapters can only be kept alive by imbuing the heroine with an IQ of a maggot and the hero with a mental illness.
Despite all this, I persisted to find the outcome of the mystery was well executed; if she had done a bit more work on the story in between it would even have been a good one. She manages to pull off the whole story by concentrating on two main characters, and that is a major plus when I see others introducing dozens of helpers and suddenly important by-blows.
If she did some reading of Georgette Heyer on how to speak Regency, use titles correctly, and its fashions and quirks, she could probably pull it off quite easily. And if she would add some reading of Mary Stewart on how to keep a mystery alive from start to end, that again should be within her means of expertise. The book is suffering mainly from laziness, not ineptitude to spin a good yarn.
Further reading
Regency Twin Trouble
Mystery in Delphi
Murder Mystery in Kenya
Putting the date of 1819 at the beginning of the story doesn't make it a Regency story. It's just a story where they use coaches instead of cars. Generic coaches at that, she doesn't know what kind of coaches were in use or in fashion at the time. The same goes for fashion, fans (the air fanning type, not the screeching teen type), and hair. Snuff boxes got lost in writing, and the bad habit of some people returning from the war of actually smoking tobacco gets no mention. And I'm sure she has no clue which war she referred to in her story.
The sex part is as enticing as Fifty Shades of Grey, meaningless, boring, and going fast forward recommended. The mystery part starts off well, but after about two chapters can only be kept alive by imbuing the heroine with an IQ of a maggot and the hero with a mental illness.
If she did some reading of Georgette Heyer on how to speak Regency, use titles correctly, and its fashions and quirks, she could probably pull it off quite easily. And if she would add some reading of Mary Stewart on how to keep a mystery alive from start to end, that again should be within her means of expertise. The book is suffering mainly from laziness, not ineptitude to spin a good yarn.
Further reading
Regency Twin Trouble
Mystery in Delphi
Murder Mystery in Kenya
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