“Playing the Part” by Jen Turano

Lucetta Plum is an actress on the rise in New York City, but is forced to abandon her starring role when a fan’s interest turns threatening. Lucetta’s widowed friend, Abigail Hart, is delighted at the opportunity to meddle in Lucetta’s life and promptly whisks her away to her grandson’s estate to hide out.

Bram Haverstein may appear to simply be a somewhat eccentric gentleman of means, but a mysterious career and a secret fascination with a certain actress mean there’s much more to him than society knows.

Lucetta, who has no interest in Abigail’s matchmaking machinations, has the best intentions of remaining cordial but coolly distant to Bram. But when she can’t ignore the strange and mysterious things going on in his house, it’ll take more than good intentions to keep her from trying to discover who Bram is behind the part he plays.

Playing the Part is a rollicking good read for historical fiction fans.  With the zaniest tide of events rolling into Lucetta’s life, I don’t see how Turano can make this stuff up.  It’s completely unpredictable and hilarious all at the same time.

Turano ends nearly every chapter with one of those wacky events.  She puts her characters in crazy situations which, while they advance the plot, they also add brevity to the story.  Lucetta and Bram do deal with real life issues and take an emotional journey during the pages of the book, but it’s never heavy.  The crimes are serious but when surrounded by such light-hearted fun, it’s impossible to be weighed down by the danger.

Those serious events I could predict partway through the story, but I had to read into Turano’s work first, and even then, while I guessed one of her twists, I never could’ve guessed the others.  At first, I found it hard to take the story seriously, but as events unfolded, I could see how expertly Turano pieced the wild and the wonderful together. 

If you’re in the mood for a fun and lighthearted story, definitely check out Playing the Part.

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Jen Turano, author of the Ladies of Distinction series and the A Class of Their Own series, is a graduate of the University of Akron. She is a member of ACFW and lives in a suburb of Denver, Colorado.

I received a free copy of this book from LitFuse Publicity in exchange for an honest review.