Michaels, Barbara - The Wizard's Daughter

[oyceter]

Marianne Ransom has just been orphaned, and she's on her way to London to hopefully find a job as a governess. But Marianne has different plans, and she ends up stumbling into some rather unsavory elements of Victorian London. In the end, she's taken on by a rich duchess for her supposed relationship to a famous spiritualist.

I'm not actually sure if this is a gothic or a mystery; none of the men seemed all that threatening to Marianne after her first London encounter, but on the other hand, there is a forbidding house with secret passages, an overprotective head housekeeper, and a woman who hides her disfigured face under a veil. What made it less gothic-y to me was Marianne's largely unfazed attitude. She's most definitely an ingenue, and very much eighteen years old to boot, but she also learns rather quickly and ends up having a bit of a backbone. I liked her a lot, despite or possibly because of how the omniscient narrator pokes at her faults.

Anyhow, this was a very fun read that drew me in via the plot and the developing relationships between the characters.