In The Girl With the Golden Eyes, Samantha Hastings takes events inspired by actual history and interweaves them with entertaining dialogue and vivid descriptions of Victorian society. The result is a plot that entertains from beginning to end. When Aaron Shipley’s grandfather acquires a painting of a beautiful young girl with hauntingly golden eyes, the obsessed Comtesse de Champagne insists that he sell it to her. Thwarted in her objective, the comtesse decides instead to find the child who posed for the painting and purchase her from her father. As the comtesse’s “daughter,” golden-eyed Hana is saved from poverty but not from misery. It’s hard enough that she must live her life according to her mentally unstable mother’s eccentric whims. It grows even harder when Sir Shipley is murdered and the comtesse is implicated in the crime. As the “murderess’s” daughter, Hana quickly becomes the object of Sir Shipley’s grandson’s ire. Fans of enemies to lovers, cozy mysteries, and Jane Austen won’t want to miss this novel. It will keep them guessing until the end.
