Caught by Surprise

I love the variety of quirky characters that this author has created for this series. It was so much fun looking in on them all again and catching up with the main characters from both of the earlier books. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Miss Temperance Flowerdew and Mr. Gilbert Cavendish take center stage in this final book in the series.

Temperance has come out of her shell and is letting her natural character traits shine forth for all of New York to see. She gets into the most amazingly hilarious situations that kept me laughing. At times it was laugh-out-loud funny and had people giving me very strange looks.

Gilbert has his own peculiar traits that he is working hard to tame so that he can connect with Temperance better. His efforts are just as funny as Temperance’s situations. He is steady and by her side throughout the story.

They find themselves in many dangerous situations which seems to be typical of this author’s writing style. They are surrounded by a number of staunch friends and supporters that are willing to step in and help immediately.

I enjoyed the faster pace of this book compared others in this series. Research is evident in the writing, though I did encounter several typos. The plot was predictable and the story is a bit awkward since Temperance’s biggest character development actually took place somewhat in the background of book 2, and she doesn’t really change much over the course of this one.

I felt the author leaned too heavily into most everyone acting as if Temperance was going to marry Gilbert and actively trying to foist it onto her despite her many declarations that she has chosen not to, especially after she told Gilbert not to ask her again. While I understand it was in part supposed to be a running joke, I’m not certain consent is something to be joked about. At the very least it’s problematic, and I found myself wishing they’d simply remain friends because of it.

It’s very clear where the author put a lot of thought into the story and where she could’ve put more. I.e. Knowing that someone has put a hit on them and having already faced multiple close calls, Gilbert decides to take Temperance out to the wide open beach to paint, breaking the effective house arrest she’d been under for her own protection, simply because she started going stir crazy and apparently love means her short term temperament is more important than her safety from rifles and snipers that definitely existed at the time.

Even though everyone seems overly concerned with Temperance rejecting Gilbert for the wrong reasons, no one puts up a fuss about making sure Edwina is quitting Pinkerton for the right reasons. She missed witnessing major events in her case because she wasn’t on duty and she can’t be everywhere at once. Having interest in multiple fields doesn’t mean she’s less cut out for one or the other. Simply being a woman in a male dominated field comes with baseless suspicions of favoritism so marrying Samuel hardly matters.

“I had no choice but to assume a different identity, along with a different gender to throw them off my trail.” This is shared by a character who attempted to have multiple people killed, was aiming a pistol at and threatening a cis white woman at the time, and ultimately ends up in an asylum. This is extremely problematic and helps perpetuate harmful misconceptions about transgender women.

On a lighter note, I’m not convinced Temperance is actually a musician. If she were, her first response after regaining consciousness would have been to bolt upright and inquire after the state of her violin.

This story is religious, a heads-up for those averse.