Thank you Macmillan Audio for the gifted audiobook!
Nothing makes me trust a book faster than two people who can't stand each other.
Kate Westbury's The Oxford Guide to Scandals and Lies is set in 1951. The war's over but England's still picking itself up. Ginevra "Gin" Bishop is a society girl studying at Oxford who's clever, competitive, and dead set on proving she's more than a debutante. Sidney Braithwaite is a WWII vet back at school trying to forget everything he saw.
They meet. They annoy each other instantly. And it's the good kind of annoyed. The kind that's really just attraction in a bad mood.
Then an MI5 agent is poisoned while tracking a Soviet spy on campus, and British intelligence decides these two are exactly the pair to find the traitor.
This is historical fiction, romance, and thriller all in one, and it works. The tension runs on two tracks. Gin and Sidney circling each other, and the investigation closing in. The banter is sharp. The twists will keep any armchair detective on their toes.
Ell Potter narrates and she's fantastic. She makes the sparring sizzle. You can hear the eye rolls.
For a debut, this covers a lot of ground: great time period, murder mystery, espionage, and a romance worth rooting for. And there's more coming. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out now!
You can grab of copy of The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies at Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it.
If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman. It's also a post WWII mystery set in London.
About the Author
Kate Westbury grew up a voracious reader of detective fiction, and unraveling plot twists became her favorite pastime. She now puts her whodunnit obsession to good use writing historical mysteries. Beyond the page, Kate teaches Latin and dreams of moving to an English village with crimes to solve. Follow Kate on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information about her work.
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