Perfect for fans of Downton Abbey. I'm going to enjoy reading one or two of these every December, and of course now I have to start reading the Pitt series. Maybe my reading challenge for 2022 will be to read backlist books only...

This was a nice, little Christmas read. I guess it's really more of a Victorian England story on privilege with a bit of a mystery set around Christmas time, but I'll still call it a Christmas story. The characters seemed a little shallow, but I did like it in the end.

2.5 stars as a Christmas read, at least for what I'm looking for.

I want heartwarming tearjerkers. Not people being jerks and deaths that don't bring anyone sadness.

The mystery of this book was trying to figure out what the mystery was. I was not entertained. *sigh*

This was super boring to me. However, I would absolutely try another book from this author, and from this series. I liked the writing and the atmosphere, it was just the story that didn't interest me at all. I also really want to like this series because I'm always looking for more Christmas books, and this series has 17 other books in it.

3.5 stars - I read this authors’ books many years ago so I was excited to read a book with my favorite character in a younger version. I doubt I would have continued without Lady Vespasia; it was really slow.

I liked this one, but was not as interested in what would happen next as I was with A Christmas Guest. Anne Perry's insights into human nature is wonderful. It adds a welcome depth to the mystery she writes.

This book was just ok. The book is divided into three parts, each shorter and less satistying than the previous. When I first started reading it took me a while to get used to the formality of speech between the characters, but then again, this is Victorian-era England. It started out as a suspenseful whodunnit among the wealthy and titled gentry. Then part two really became a book about internal self-exploration with the whoddunit part becoming a secondary story. I was left wanting to know more about Lady Vespasia even though this is technically not her journey. I was also left wanting to know more about the deceased and why what happened, happened. The author really does leave you wanting more. I guess she's a writer of series so she plans to continue writing about this(ese) character(s) and the inner journey they take? Anyway, I don't like books, or movies, that seem to be written with a sequel already in mind. Then in part three, the journey ends, both physically and emotionally, and all of a sudder everyone becomes all religious. Mind you, I am a Christian, and part three takes place on Christmas Eve, but we went from a mystery novel to a novel about religious redemption in the blink of an eye. I would have loved for part three to have been as long as the previous two parts. It just seem that after such a long physical and emotional journey things were tidied up a little too quickly and really left me wanting more. So for all the reasons previously stated, this book was just ok.