Lucetta Plum is an actress on the rise in New York City, but is forced to abandon her starring role when a fan’s interest turns threatening. Lucinda’s widowed friend, Abigail Hart, is delighted at the opportunity to meddle in Lucetta’s life and promptly whisks her away to her grandson’s estate to hide out.

Bram Haverstein may appear to simply be a somewhat eccentric gentleman of means, but a mysterious career and a secret fascination with a certain actress mean there’s much more to him than society knows.

Lucetta, who has no interest in Abigail’s matchmaking machinations, has the best intentions of remaining cordial but coolly distant to Bram. But when she can’t ignore the strange and mysterious things going on in his house, it’ll take more than good intentions to keep her from trying to discover who Bram is behind the part he plays.

Playing the Part (A Class of Their Own #3) by Jen Turano
Published March 1, 2016 by Bethany House
Format: Netgalley e-book for review; 352 pages
Historical Fiction/Christian Fiction
Also By This Author: The Ladies of Distinction series
Goodreads | Amazon
My Rating: ♥♥♥

Thoughts:

Playing the Part is the conclusion to Jen Turano’s A Class of Their Own series. I haven’t read the first two books, After a Fashion and In Good Company, but the author does a good job at filling new readers, like myself, in on previous plot lines that are important for Lucetta and Bram’s story.

I had previously read Gentleman of Her Dreams, a novella from Jen Turano’s Ladies of Distinction series, and I really enjoyed the humor of Turano’s writing as well as the stubbornness of the main character. I was really looking forward to experiencing that again with Playing the Part, but unfortunately my expectations must have been too high because I found myself not connecting with this novel as much as I wanted to. Lucetta is still a fierce and strong-minded heroine, and there are some funny scenes in Playing the Part, but overall I thought it was missing something to make it great.

I did enjoy the allusions to some of my favorite gothic literature. Classic gothic lit is one of my favorite genres, and it made me happy to read references to Edgar Allan Poe and Dracula (the love interest’s name is Bram, which I really loved!). Plus there’s also a dungeon and unexplained “hauntings” going on in Bram’s gothic castle, so if you’re like me you’ll probably enjoy those descriptions.

Read This Book If…

…you enjoy historical fiction.
…you’re a fan of classic gothic fiction including Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker (there are several references).
….you like reading clean romances that aren’t excessively religious.

Final Musings:

Although I didn’t love Playing the Part, I did enjoy it enough that I will probably read the first two books in the series sometime. Jen Turano is a fun writer who places her characters in entertaining situations. Her novels are great picks if you need a lighthearted historical romance to read.