Searching for Irene

I am generally not the target audience for historical romances.  I'm not a curmudgeon, I like happily ever after endings, it's just that many (many!) of the romances I've read take advantage of contrived plot devices to introduce the main romantic characters, have them DEEPLY passionately in love three paragraphs later, then spend the next four (or fourteen) chapters going through drama and heartache to only figure out 8 pages before the end of the book that they really ARE meant to be together (and rich aunt Philene really understands their love and shuffles off her mortal coil leaving the poor-but-honest-teacher an heiress so they can sail off into the sunset on a yacht).
Romance writing also often isn't top notch. So, I didn't have very high expectations going into this book.


Searching for Irene is a period (1920's) romantic mystery set rural Virginia.  The family whose patriarch hires her to put his estate in order live in and around a castle like great house.  The former secretary/financial planner (Irene) disappeared under mysterious circumstances some weeks before the heroine, Anna, arrives at the estate.

There are some fairly minor problems with the plot and dialogue.  It often feels stilted and stapled into place to move the plot along.  There's not much 'show' and quite a lot of 'tell'. There are also a number of anachronisms (earned income credit is mentioned on page 191, it wasn't enacted until 1975), but again, to me they weren't overwhelming or terribly annoying.
The book is 'clean', no sex or foul language and can be read anywhere without embarrassment.

I found myself wondering about some of the main character's motivations.  While LDS women weren't encouraged to do so, were they even allowed to marry outside the faith?  (I know they are allowed to now, but in the 1920s?)  She was from a financially struggling broken family, how did she get through college?  Nobody in her employer's family (with whom she is required to live in the castle/house) says much at all about her attending different church services than the family's.  That would've been somewhat remarkable given the time period and anti-Mormon sentiment of the day, I think?  There were some religious/philosophical Mormon bits which I found interesting, but some readers might find off-putting.
In the course of her investigation, it's revealed that the former secretary (Irene) had a criminal record and was incarcerated for a time.  Would she have been allowed to work for a secretarial agency in that case?

I do overthink these things, but they were a little distracting to me at least.

Final opinion? Worth a look/readable/3 stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.