Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare

Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare
UK Publication: April 2022
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: [★★★]

This ARC was provided by HQ (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.

One word review – Lush

Synopsis from Goodreads:  The glittering RMS Queen Mary. A nightclub singer on the run. An aristocratic family with secrets worth killing for.

London, 1936. Lena Aldridge wonders if life has passed her by. The dazzling theatre career she hoped for hasn’t worked out. Instead, she’s stuck singing in a sticky-floored basement club in Soho, and her married lover has just left her. But Lena has always had a complicated life, one shrouded in mystery as a mixed-race girl passing for white in a city unforgiving of her true racial heritage.

She’s feeling utterly hopeless until a stranger offers her the chance of a lifetime: a starring role on Broadway and a first-class ticket on the Queen Mary bound for New York. After a murder at the club, the timing couldn’t be better, and Lena jumps at the chance to escape England. But death follows her onboard when an obscenely wealthy family draws her into their fold just as one among them is killed in a chillingly familiar way. As Lena navigates the Abernathy’s increasingly bizarre family dynamic, she realizes that her greatest performance won’t be for an audience, but for her life.

With seductive glamor, simmering family drama, and dizzying twists, Louise Hare makes her beguiling US debut.

My Thoughts:  I really enjoyed this murder mystery and only managed to guess half of the reveal. This is a sedately paced murder mystery and not a fast paced thriller and for me that really suited the time period and the setting.

I loved the fact the murder is set on a boat narrowing down opportunities for murder but also meaning that the murderer is trapped until port is reached. The descriptions of the boat from the cabins, to the food and the entertainment all made me feel like I was there sailing merrily away. I particularly enjoyed Lena and Daisy “slumming it” by drinking below decks once all the respectable passengers are safely in bed.

Lena’s background also made for interesting reading as it is not often I have read a book from the point of view of black woman passing for white and as far as I can recall this is the first book I have read where said women is doing it only for others while herself being happy with her heritage. In England everyone who knows her knows her heritage. Kudos for that.

Chuck in a ship board romance and every angle is covered in this fun read.

Oh and just look at that cover is that not a thing of beauty?

Who would like this? I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys the glitz and glamour of the 1930s while not really caring if the resolution to the murder mystery is a little out there.

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