A Little Light Mischief

A Turner Novella

By: Cat Sebastian

Narrated by: Morag Sims

A seductive thief...

Lady’s maid Molly Wilkins is done with thieving - and cheating and stabbing and all the rest of it. She’s determined to keep her hands to herself, so she really shouldn’t be tempted to seduce her employer’s prim and proper companion, Alice. But how can she resist when Alice can’t seem to keep her eyes off Molly?

Finds her own heart...

For the first time in her life, Alice Stapleton has absolutely nothing to do. The only thing that seems to occupy her thoughts is a lady’s maid with a sharp tongue and a beautiful mouth. Her determination to know Molly’s secrets has her behaving in ways she never imagined as she begins to fall for the impertinent woman.

Has been stolen.

When an unwelcome specter from Alice’s past shows up unexpectedly at a house party, Molly volunteers to help the only way she knows how: with a little bit of mischief.

©2019 Cat Sebastian (P)2019 HarperAudio

Sparkling, fun, feisty, charming

Great short story featuring a favorite character, the spiky, clever, determined Molly Wilkins finding joy. She’s so great - wry and honest and self aware. Her love interest has been abused and oppressed until she’s a pale shadow of a woman, but released from her miserable situation proves to be full of totally unexpected fireworks. They are wonderful separately and together. Excellent audio performance.

Amazing

I love Cat Sebastian’s work, but I was still worried about this book because a lot of historical lesbian fiction I have read has been disappointing. However, this book was amazing it was sweet, funny and heartwarming. I loved the characters and would read a thousand more books featuring Alice and Molly.

No sex

It’s a cute story but not a lot of action between the ladies. They never get past second base.

A quick, delightful listen

This was a sweet, fun listen. Just enough character development and plot for a short novella, a refreshingly kind patroness, and a delightful romance and HEA.

Morag Sims’ narration is clear, expressive, and breezy. Perfect for this story.

Enjoyable characters

Interesting story but too short. So much potential in this story I don’t understand why it was so short.

Very Enjoyable

It was really enjoyable. And while I would’ve loved a longer story, it felt complete.

Cute story

Short but OK a little confusing at first. Liked the narration. A little more description of London would be more believable,

A Beautiful Romance!

I finished this audiobook in almost one sitting. I found it highly enjoyable! The narrator did such a lovely job reading this! I hope that this author does more female with female Regency romances because this was wonderful!

Clever, Nice Performance by Morag Sims

Clever and fun story with interesting characters, nicely performed by Morag Sims. If you're enjoying the Turner series, this one's a must!

Recommend this as text than audio

I...did not love this. But it was just okay. I see people complaining about novellas being too short, but I would argue that this novella felt too long. There was stuff happening, but at the same time, it felt like nothing was happening at all. The three full-length novels in this Turner series are my favorite books and what really got me wanting to read more historical romances, but this book falls flat in comparison.

I think for me, it's because I read this in audio and the narration just wasn't my favorite after listening to Gary Furlong do the other books in this series. It just wasn't the same. And I'll talk more about this further down in the review. So while I am happy this is a f/f romance with lesbian and bisexual rep, and that Molly Wilkins got her happily ever after, this story just wasn't as exciting as I wanted it to be.

Content notes includes misogyny, sexual harassment, blackmail, and mentions of alcoholism.

You don't need to have read any of the other books in this series in order to read this book. In fact, it might even be better if you start the series with this novella before reading the full-length novels. There's only a brief glimpse of Jack and Oliver from the first book (both of whom I really loved seeing even if only for a very brief moment!), but nothing you really need to know beforehand if you want to start with this story.

HOWEVER, if you did read The Soldier's Scoundrel first, this story is about Molly Wilkins, who we know to be an acquaintance of Jack Turner and was a thief. Molly is now a lady's maid for Mrs. Wraxhall and is now pretty much on the straight and narrow. We met Mrs. Wraxhall and her husband in the first book of this series, and they were really who the entire mystery in that book revolved around. We see a fair bit of the dear Mrs. Wraxhall in this story, but her husband is not currently in this story at all. I'm not sure why he was so throughly written out (he's alive, don't worry), although an explanation is given to why he's not in this story and why Mrs. Wraxhall is in a bit of a state without him.

Mrs. Wraxhall has taken in Alice Stapleton and Alice is to be a...lady's companion? To lounge about the house all day doing needlework? Making idle chitchat with visitors? I have absolutely no idea from this book what a lady's companion is or is meant to be doing all day, but I do know that whatever they're supposed to do, Alice is BORED. Just absolutely bored out of her mind. She's never had so much free time in her life. A good portion of this book is about figuring out why Mrs. Wraxhall became her benefactor and how Alice winded up in this position.

I think my issue with reading a novella is that when the story is about new characters who are falling in love versus a novella with established characters who have ALREADY fallen in love in a full-length book or books in a series, is that the length of time these new characters get to fall in love is very, very short. When the story starts, Alice already has eyes for Molly. And this is definitely a ME problem because I love nothing more than a slow burn, but a novella is probably the last place you would get a slow burn. So, that's on me. But I do appreciate there's one sort of explicit sex scene? The way some people have been reviewing this story, I was thinking this was going to be closed door. I was shocked there was any sex on the page at all.

I did find the audiobook narration lacking. Like, Morag Sims is a good narrator, but the problem is that I had a very hard time knowing when she switched between Alice and Molly's POVs. She gave the character's voices that was easy to differentiate when they were talking, but she read their thoughts and exposition in a more neutral voice, which unfortunately sounded much more like Alice. So it was difficult to know when the story was in Molly's POV.

The thing with the rest of the Turner series is that Gary Furlong committed to reading even the character's thoughts in that character's voice all the way through. And I know not every audiobook narrator does that when they're narrating multiple characters, but the fact that Morag Sims doesn't do it here for a story in the same series just threw me off a bit. Too often while I was listening to this audiobook, I just lost the thread of whose POV I was supposed to be listening to and it felt like the audiobook was dragging on forever. And that's with me listening to the audiobook at 2x speed.

I think the story overall was just okay. I didn't love it but I don't really have a problem with it or anything. There were things happening and mysteries to be discovered, but there just wasn't anything I found particularly EXCITING. However, the part I loved most is when we find out what Molly did with Alice's writings and embroidery. It's sweet. There's also a child in this story and it's nice to see Molly and Alice taking care of the little girl. The epilogue was sweet too. I don't really care for sweet stories, but I liked what Cat Sebastian did here. Also, props to the publisher for this stunning cover! I love real people on covers more than the current trend of cartoony illustrated ones. And it's great we have a f/f novella with real people on it.

If you want a low-stakes f/f novella, I would say give this a shot. If it's an option for you, I would suggest reading the novella in text though instead of listening to the audiobook.