An Affair with Mr. Kennedy

Written by Jillian Stone
Review by Anne Clinard Barnhill

In her debut historical romance, Jillian Stone takes us to Victorian England and Scotland Yard. Cassandra St. Cloud, a young widow, rents a flat from Zeno Kennedy, a handsome detective on a mission to discover an Irish terrorist plot which involves bombing various spots in London. Kennedy is immediately struck with the beauty of his new tenant and, conveniently, she is connected to the very men he wants to investigate. Though St. Cloud lives in puritanical Britain in the late 1800s, she is a progressive woman who has taken the forward-thinking tenets of her mother and father, both physicians, to heart. Her mother is a suffragette and believes that a woman has the right to sexual pleasure. Her father has no objections to women voting or riding bicycles while wearing bloomers (!).

Of course, Mr. Kennedy and Mrs. St. Cloud are attracted to each other and fall in love. Things become complicated when she discovers he has been using her to spy on men of her acquaintance. This book is an enjoyable romp, but historical fiction readers should be warned there are explicit lovemaking scenes throughout.