Today I’m joining the blog tour for Dangerous. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour and to Orenda Books for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

When fiction is fatal…

Living in exile in Venice, the disgraced Lord Byron revels in the freedoms of the city

But when he is associated with the deaths of local women, found with wounds to their throats, and then a novel called The Vampyre is published under his name, rumours begin to spread that Byron may be the murderer…

As events escalate and tensions rise – and his own life is endangered, as well as those he holds most dear – Byron is forced to play detective, to discover who is really behind these heinous crimes. Meanwhile, the scandals of his own infamous past come back to haunt him…

Rich in gothic atmosphere and drawing on real events and characters from Byron’s life, Dangerous is a riveting, dazzling historical thriller, as decadent, dark and seductive as the poet himself…

Review:

Dangerous is another historical fiction novel that makes me wonder why I don’t read more in the genre, especially when it’s written by someone as eloquent as Essie Fox. Her use of vocabulary and language is outstanding and conjures up vivid images of the period in which Byron lived. Byron’s life and work is a significant gap in my literary knowledge, so I came to this novel almost blind, but Essie Fox has researched incredibly thoroughly and this shines through the pages without ever feeling like “overload.” I also love the way she incorporates Byron’s poetry into the story.

It’s clear from the beginning that Byron isn’t the most honourable of characters, but nevertheless there is something about him that made me sympathise with him. I love the way that Essie Fox has imagined the characters and both the real and fictional characters come to life with her writing, and I really wanted to know what the outcomes for each person would be.

The plot of Dangerous is very compelling and I became completely immersed in the story from the first page. It moves very quickly and it did not always go in the way I expected, which meant I was hanging on to every word, especially towards the ending.

I can’t wait to see what Essie Fox does next!

Dangerous is available from Amazon.

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