A review by cutenanya
A Man of Some Repute by Elizabeth Edmondson

4.0

This book is surprisingly enjoyable and I am a bit baffled by the mediocre rating on Goodreads. When a leg injury forced Hugo to retire to desk work at Selchester, he stumbled across the mystery of the death of Earl Selchester, who vanished without a trace nearly 7 years ago. Together with Freya, the Earl's niece, his uncle Leo and his little sister, Georgia, he uncovered the secrets behind the murder, but that was only the beginning for the Earl was a man of many secrets.

The plot: I like how Hugo and Freya investigated the murder together and it's good to see a strong and intelligent female character. However, I think the there are certain places where the investigation is "too easy", like how a witness can remember what happened nearly 7 years ago and helped provide an alibi. Unless it left a very distinct impression, it would be hard to remember things so clearly.

The characters: While I like the whole cast, since this is the beginning of a series, we only get to scratch the surface of the characters, all of them seem to have secrets of their own. I would like to learn more about them in the future.

There is no romance in this book but judging from the setup of the story, I wouldn't be surprised to find more romantic interactions between Hugo and Freya in the future (or maybe even a love triangle). Nonetheless, I don't really care for the romance and find the story just as interesting without any romantic plot.

Overall, this is a pretty good book and would have been better had the author spent more time developing the murder mystery further, be more realistic and stop giving all the witnesses extraordinary memory skills.