3.5! A fun rump! The same in tone and humour and silliness as in The Wisteria Society, so if you didn’t like that, you won’t like that one! So similar, in fact, that it felt a little repetitive at times as the same jokes about Victorian manners were coming up. Reading romance when you’re not a huge fan of the romance genre can be weird because then you have to say things like “I guess the romance was okay because it didn’t annoy me” but I guess the romance was okay because it didn’t annoy me! I just have to accept that most romance seems dead set on happening over an unreasonably short period of time and that I should just go along with it instead of screaming BUT IT’S BEEN ONLY A WEEK. That said, I appreciate Holton because she seems perfectly aware of this and often pokes fun at it. In fact, there’s almost a meta aspect to this story (through the characters of two publicists). I enjoyed the character, especially Beth, and I enjoyed the scholarly aspects and the magical birds. It tipped into ‘too cheese’ territory a few times but because of the tone, it was easier to just overlook that. It’s just some silly, OTT Victorian romance fun, and was a nice easy read to keep me going forward out of my reading slump.