After sneaking out of Queen Victoria’s palace to meet her best friends Peter and Jillian for some fencing practice, they and Charlotte were attacked by rabid mechanical dogs. Rabid dogs had been attacking others throughout London, and they were its latest victims.
With Peter and Jillian under medical confinement, Charlotte enlisted the help of her friend Benjamin to help find clues about the dogs. With rabies coursing through her own system, she only has a short time to find out who created the dogs, why they would do such a thing, and search for an antidote.
Despite herself, Charlotte finds herself dreaming romantic thoughts about both Benjamin and Peter, knowing they are in a lower class of palace workers and that she is engaged to be married to someone she’d never met. In the midst of trying to solve this mystery, she manages to find time to become the Robin Hood of medicine for the city’s poor.
Maddison does a somewhat credible job in her first novel but, by putting Charlotte in a higher social position than Peter, Jillian and Benjamin in 1854 London, she creates a huge gap between them and nullifies much of Charlotte’s feelings. I was not pleased with her open ending, so will leave it up to you to decide if you want to Read it or Not.
You Decide: Should I Read it or Not? 