Flora MCGuire's accompanying Eddy back the UK on the SS Minneapolis. An interesting trip for sure but then she finds a body and discovers that she has a talent to finding villains. It's a fast and entertaining read. Davison is a good storyteller who does an especially nice job with the atmospherics. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

I cannot give a full review of this book. I found this book to be uninteresting for me. I wanted to request and read it, hoping that this would be a good book to possibly start a new interest in the historical fiction genre. I'm all about mystery and history, but found this book to be boring and I couldn't get into it. I'd prefer not to have my feedback posted for others to review as not to sway people away from this book as I didn't give it a fair chance for a valid book review. Thank you for allowing me to read my ARC.

Flora’s Secret – by Anita Davison – Enjoyable and A Nice Surprise – I look forward to reading more books by Anita Davison


Since mysteries are one of my favorite genres I was excited at the opportunity to read a book by an author whose work is new to me. That’s why I selected this historical fiction by Anita Davison, Flora’s Secret.

Flora’s Secret is the story about a young governess, Flora Maguire, who is accompanying her charge Eddy Vaughn as they journey home to England on the maiden voyage of the Minneapolis. Any hope for smooth sailing is quickly abandoned when Flora finds a dead body at the bottom of stairway. Is it an accident or murder? Spunky Miss Maguire is not one to be easily deterred and will do whatever she can to get to the bottom of this man’s untimely death. Thrown into the mix is a shipboard romance with a fine gentleman Mr. Bunny Harrington.

I really enjoyed this book. The main characters well developed, interesting and very likable. The author did a great job in describing people and scenes. She gave enough details for the reader to imagine the scenes, but not too much. The characters, Flora and Bunny, where very likable; people I would want to know. I’m hopeful their story will continue in another book. Other characters were intriguing and it was fun to try and figure out who the good guys were and the bad guys were.

While this book is not from a Christian writer and publisher, I appreciated the fact that the story was told and developed without profanity and sexually explicit scenes. It’s clean historical fiction, a mystery with a bit of romance, that focused on developing characters and the storyline. This was the first book I’ve read by Anita Davison and I look forward to reading more of her books.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Aria Publishers for the opportunity to read Flora’s Secret by Anita Davison. I was under no obligation to give a favorable review.

This is an exciting mew voice in the historic cozy mystery genre. As a longitmemystery and cozy reader, I found that this book was compelling, well paced, and I really like tge character of Flora, a plucky governess who will not leave well enough alone.

Typical plot devices of patronizing women's ideas and thoughts, and playing peek-a-boo with characters who are central to the plot are there but are not distracting. Many of the characters we've seen before in similar , the grumpy woman with a mousey companion, the honeymooners, the cad, and the actress. What's unique is that they way they interact and contribute to the murders solution. My mind changed many times over with twists and turns of whodunit as I read the book. and that's what made this book so good. Complex, with a budding romance, served up in a enjoyable read. I've already started the second book, it was that good.

I received this book from Net Galley in return for an unbiased review.