A Golden Cage (NEWPORT GILDED AGE)

Fun series about Gilded Newport. It has been a short time since the last book and Dee is staying with Gran Gwen. Joe is still at the warehouse being overprotective of Dee. The local moral police, a judge with ties to Comstock, hosts a theater troupe for his birthday. A friend's daughter is in the cast and ends up in trouble at the door of Bonhour in the middle of the night. The next morning a dead actor is on the floor and she is missing. I figured out most of the pieces but not really at the end. Really fun to watch Dee blossom and Joe come to terms with his feelings.

Detailed look into the Newport Gilded set and how they summered. A murder upsets the usual pattern of socializing and is interesting to read.

Shelley Freydont has written a terrific follow-up novel to her great first book "A Gilded Grave." The characters which captured my imagination so well in "A Gilded Grave" are very nicely developed further in "A Golden Cage." Shelley has a great feeling for old Newport as well as for the different levels of society, and I love how Gran Gwen and Deanna are fighting against the barriers placed by society. It's a fun read and can be enjoyed without having read the first book in the series, although I heartily recommend reading the first book as well as this book. I can't wait for the third and following books in this series!

I received this book for free from Berkley Prime Crime in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. The cover is my favorite part of the book. The book itself isn’t bad, but the cover is lovely! I especially love the yellow dress… I found myself finding other things to do during the course of reading this. Never a good sign with a book! But it was never boring enough that I wanted to DNF it. I didn’t really like any of the actors, Noreen came across as mean and sharp. And it made it very hard to believe her sudden almost 180 when she started being nice to Joe and then Deanna. Deanna herself was fun, and I liked her interactions with Elspeth and Gran Gwen. But I also wanted to hit her with the book, for the amount of times she ran off (alone but for Elspeth) and got herself into situations that could have ended really badly. I had no idea who the killer was, and when it was finally revealed… While it made sense for the time period, it just didn’t click with me. Especially as the wrap-up conversations with the characters afterwords made it sound like the killer was going to get away with it. Deanna seemed to find all the clues, with occasional tidbits thrown in by Elspeth, and at one point Laurette. But Will, who was the police officer, kept coming up against dead ends. I liked Will, but he was made to look horribly ineffectual during the book. I saw the conversation with Joe coming from the first pages, but it was still amusing how it ended up. I haven’t read the first book in this series, and I most likely won’t. Nor will I continue if there are more books, this one just wasn’t able to hold my attention enough. But judging by all the 4-star reviews for it out there, I’m in the minority. So you may like the book better than I did! (cross-posted to my blog)

I enjoyed this book. It is thoughtful, as Deanna is thinking about and seeing the possibilities for a woman of her time and social class. The mystery is around a young woman of Dee's class who has become an actress. That freedom is counter-balanced by being socially outcast and sexually vulnerable. At the same time, Dee is with Joe's more progressive family, and she sees what a fulfilling marriage can look like, what the possibilities of a more protected freedom are. The plot is complex and interesting, with issues of birth control and homosexuality, public morality and private moral laxity at the forefront, since Oscar Wilde has just been convicted. A very good read. I really get a good sense of the period in these novels.

This is a fun historical fiction and I enjoyed how spunky the characters were.

Charming! This period piece mystery full of twists and turns, completely engaging!

After reading the first one I knew I had to read this one right away! Loved it!!!