Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book is mostly poorly deployed cliches and stilted word choices. The author spends so much time trying to work in particular descriptive phrases that she often misses contradictions in detail. One moment the (rather annoying) protagonist will be thrashing around in a nightmare, waking up, getting dressed, and going out without disturbing anyone and then two chapters later she'll be tip toeing around talking about how lightly her chaperones sleep, and how the smallest sneeze will send them running to her. Or she'll describe the exact same thing as 'soft' and 'steely' two sentences apart in the same paragraph. Or she'll talk about how she didn't really need a heavy coat in India, but of the several she had, they were left behind because they didn't fit in the steamer trunk (does the author know what a steamer trunk is?). This is after we've already been told that she wasn't able to gather any of her clothes because she wasn't allowed to go back to her house and fetch them! These are small details and don't interfere with the plot, but I find them very distracting. It prevents me from getting into the story and I've put the book down multiple times out of irritation. This book is also disappointing from a historical fiction perspective. Other than the fact that they're on a ship and frequent descriptions of outfits, there's nothing to indicate that this book is set in the 20s. The language and behavior of the characters isn't consistent with the era, and beyond the protagonist's immediate past none of the characters have any backstory to speak of that would set the scene. I'm pretty clearly not the intended audience for this book, and I think it could be a pleasant read for some people, but if you've read a lot of mysteries or historical fiction this is probably not the book for you.