Daughters of Night

Publish date: 28 Jan 2021  

Daughters of Night is the second book by Laura Shephard-Robinson after her successful debut novel: ‘Blood & Sugar’. I am thankful to Laura, Pan Macmillan, and Netgalley for sending me the arc copy for review.

Set in the 1780s London, ‘Daughters of Night‘ surrounds the murder mystery of a prostitute named Lucia di Caracciolo. She wasn’t a lady of high class and the society rejects her. So, the murder investigation is closed without catching the culprit. The story follows Caroline Corsham (Caro), who was a friend to Lucia (or Lucy Loveless), trying to seek justice for her friend and find the murderer with the help of a hired thief-taker: Peregrine Child.

Synopsis

“In the wrong hands, a secret is a weapon.”

Daughters of Night follows Caroline Corsham walking in the middle of the night to seek help from her friend Lucia, for her troubles. Little did she knew, her troubles were just getting started the night when she finds her friend brutally murdered in the dark alley. Lucia with her dying breath said only 2 words to Caro, which she couldn’t get out of her mind: ‘He knows’. Could it be her secret? And Who knows it? Is she in danger? She doesn’t know. All she knows now is that Lucia wasn’t who she said she was. She was a prostitute who pretended to be an Italian Noblewomen. Even then, Caroline can’t shake the feeling that the woman died in her arms.

Due to Lucy’s status in the society, the police and law doesn’t care much about her case and declares her case as closed. But Caro can’t shrug off the feeling. She knows there’s more to this case and she takes upon herself to seek justice for Lucia. She decides to hire a thief-taker Peregrine Child to help her with the investigation.

Slowly she finds that the people involved in the murder are really powerful and would do anything to stop this investigation. She knows the investigation is dangerous to her life and her reputation. The constant death threats and blackmails are just acting as fuel to Caro and Child to find the murderer. Caroline is determined to seek justice for Lucy to the extent that she is ready to put everything on the line.

Writing

The writing style of Laura is great. I really enjoyed how she would first explain the life of each of her characters separately before including them in the actual plot.

The characters and story perfectly fit into the historic period in the 1700s. The politics and power of men over women is nicely depicted.

The only problem I had with her writing: she stretched the storyline a bit more than required. The story could have been shorter as I got bored with the never-ending loop of mysteries

Characters

All the characters in the book were up to the mark. The characters reflect the misogyny of the 1780s era.

To start, we have Mrs. Caroline Corsham, the wife of Harry Corsham, and the main character of the book. She is a determined woman and a lady of class with her own secrets. I like Caroline’s character very much. Society can't command her life. She was fearless in her investigation and when threatened, she came off stronger instead of a scared weeping woman. Courageous, strong, fearless, smart, and confident women. That is the best way I can describe her. Definitely loved her!

Next, we have Peregrine Child, the thief-taker. Child was a good character too, but not as powerful as Caroline. He is a lonely drunkard who lost everything in his life and now living off earning a small income from the thief-taker job. He is good with his investigation and could mostly trick people into telling him what he wants….Well….Mostly….

The life before the murder of Lucy Loveless, and her friends, Kitty Carefree, and Pamela has been beautifully described. Kitty was god-fearing and a dreamer, who always believed she would find a man who would love her, and she would leave the business for good. Pamela is a 15-year old virgin, who is preparing for her auction. She dreams of being rich and finds a way around it when she sets her eyes on Lieutenant Edward Dodd-Bellingham.

Lucy is a more realistic character who knows the society and how they work. She doesn’t believe in marriage and wouldn’t take a husband even if someone fell for her. Her determination to live a life of a noblewoman (pretentious one though) with rich possessions drowned her in countless debts. Among all other prostitutes, Lucy was more matured and knew her reality more. She had an empathetic heart especially for her closed ones like Kitty and Pamela.

Apart from these, we have 5 main suspects: Jacob Agnetti, Lord March, Jonathan stone, and the Bellingham brothers.

Jacob Agnetti is the artist who painted the women from the whore’s club. He is a nice gentleman with a bad reputation due to his dealings with prostitutes. Nevertheless, he loves his wife, praised and respected by all the whores. Yet, I found this character shady from the very start.

Lord March is just a pawn to the powerful people. He wouldn’t do anything that would temper his reputation in society. He is basically a spineless man.

The Dodd-Bellingham brothers (Step bothers) Simon and Edward are 2 very different beings. Simon is quiet and shy and nice to people all the time. His brother on the other hand is a whoremonger, and a womanizer. He is good looking and so he disrespects women all the time.

Lord March, Dodd-Bellingham brothers, and Jonathan stone together are the founding members of The Priapus Club, with Jonathan being the head of the club. Priapus Club as quoted by Stone is ‘A society for the gentleman with a shared interest in classical civilization’. But it is more of a drunk and a whoring club. Mr. Stone is a powerful moneylender with connections to the royal family. Basically, he is a man that can’t be touched by anyone. He is a cunning man who plays off the secrets of others and forces people to do what he wants.

There is a secret character in the book, which is an important one for the plot, which you will know once you read the book.

Plot

To start off with the storyline review, I would have to accept, Daughters of Night is a mixed emotion book. There were times I was so much intrigued with the storyline; I couldn’t keep the book down. But then, there were times, I was so bored; it was a bit difficult to open the book again. So, yeah, it is difficult to judge for me as well.

The storyline is quite stretched, as I have said before. There were instances when the investigation bore no results and the story was continuously looping around. There were a lot of loose ends to the investigation with no results, which bored me for around 100-150 pages. Of course, the book started taking pace back again after that, but it took some time to get back on-track which made me almost DNF the book.

The story unravels a lot of mysteries about the past and present life of the main prostitutes in the book. Laura has done a great job with the writing (Of course except for the fact that it could have been a little shorter than it is now). The daughters of Night starts with indulging the readers with the life of each character separately, and then including them in the main mystery, which is quite good., You get to know a character fully before you understand how they are related to the plotline.

I really liked how the book started with the murder mystery of one girl and slowly it unravels the mysterious life of other characters as well. It slowly intertwines all the characters and how they are related to the murder.

There have been a couple of shocking revelations, but normally the story went quite smoothly.

I have mixed emotions when it comes to the final plot. It somehow didn’t blow my mind in some scenarios, whereas there were quite some interesting twists and turns too. (As I said, the book was a roller coaster with good and bad impressions). Trying not to give away spoilers, all I can say is that I was expecting the unexpected and I somewhere knew who would/wouldn’t be the bad one (😉 ). Although, I am quite shocked by the actual killer.

Conclusion

All-in-all, Daughters of Night is a good read. I would love it more if it were quite shorter.