BrokenTune

He was calm and soothing and had a reasonable explanation for everything. No woman should have to put up with that.

‘Well, answer me this. How did she get free in the first place?’

‘I let her go.’

I took a deep breath. He took a step backwards. People were edging out of the pod.

‘Hold on. Before you go up like the Professor’s manure heap, I had to let her go.’

I would have raised an incredulous eyebrow, but my face hurt too much. I had to content myself with sipping my drink in a disbelieving manner.

This is not going to be an in-depth review, this is going to be short: this book was a romp.

I still maintain that it is the perfect example of what would happen if you mixed The Eyre Affair with Indiana Jones and based it in Hogwarts - in other words, there seemed to be a bit of pastiche at work in the creation of the story.

It worked.

I laughed, I cried, I rolled my eyes a lot. 

But I may even read the sequel at some point because the cliffhanger ending (yes, I hated that too) promised another romp with a pertinent question at heart:

Was it really Mary Stuart who was executed or was it, in fact, Elizabeth?

Mostly light-hearted fun ... with a few plot issues ... and lot of dei ex machina.