Will I Like This Book? – The Agency For Scandal by Laura Wood

I’ve definitely been picking up more historical books recently. I’m slowly finding more that I enjoy set in the past, and this is another one that I’m excited about. There were ARCs of this available at YALC that I didn’t win, but I did pick up a sampler that included this book in it. The moment that I finished this sample, I emailed the publisher asking for an ARC in the hope they had more. It doesn’t sound like they did, so I’ll just have to wait. Sigh. I’m definitely going to read this book as soon as I can.

The Agency for Scandal follows eighteen-year-old Isobel, a young woman who is trying hard to hide from the society that her family is penniless. She works with a women’s detective agency to right wrongs and digs up scandals about the powerful men who deserve to be bought down. What she doesn’t expect is that one day a case will tangle her up with the Duke she’s been nursing a crush on, who doesn’t seem to know she exists. It’s coming out from Scholastic in January 2023.

I know my summary of this book wasn’t great, but it wasn’t really that which grabbed me. From the first sentence, I was intrigued. I struggle with historical often as they’ll either feel too modern sounding, or they’ll read too much like a classic and then I’ll find them dull. This book hit a perfect balance. It was easy to read now, but it still felt like a story that could’ve been told back during the regency.

You don’t get too much detail into what Izzy does in the sample. I found myself very much intrigued. In fact, writing that summary gave me more knowledge about what she does than you’re introduced to in the story. I’m even more excited about this book now. I’m glad the first chapter doesn’t introduce too much as it felt a bit more like a mystery, and I enjoyed that.

The Duke she has a crush on, Max, sounds like a sweet guy. I like that a lot of what we see of him is just a memory of Izzy accidentally spying on him. It felt like we’ve already seen the real him, yet there’s so much more the book’s going to dive into. I want to know more about him, and I’m hoping that he and Izzy will be cute together.

This was quite a short sample, so there isn’t really much to say. The next few posts I’m going to do in this series are going to be a lot longer as the samples were more substantial. But I’m so glad I’ve had a little preview of this book.

I’ve not read Laura Wood before, though I’ve seen Beth from Books Nest talking about her, so that’ll be the first thing I’ve read by her, and I’m very excited.