What The Lady Wants by Hester Browne

Having read the first two of The Little Lady Agency books I was expecting good things from the third installment.  Unfortunately, I found that this book was particularly hit and miss and there appeared to be gaping plot chasms between this and previous books.  I did find myself wondering if the author had started writing this before the other two and then abandoned it in favour of the backstory so that by the time she returned to it nothing made any real sense at all.

The wit of the writing does salvage some of the plot shortcomings and this is most apparent with Melissa's dealings with her family and Honey's dealings with P. Nicky.  As with the previous books it is the sheer joy of the disfunctionality of Mel's family relationships that bring the greatest enjoyment as well as the greatest opportunity to cringe.  I did miss the scattering of useless Hooray-types that need the Agency's salvation; they are referred to but nothing like the glory of male ineptitude that there was in the first book, a generous dose of in book and just a teensy smattering in this one.  Sadly this one is more about places and things than people.

The romance in this book is mixed.  We have a miraculously repaired marriage, a broken engagement, a proposal and a rather bewildering passion between two characters who have gone down this route previously and decided they were more brother and sister than mr and mrs.

This book passed a pleasant few hours for me and entertained sufficiently but I did feel a little let down after the previous two.