Ilze

Well, I hate to rain on Sherry Thomas' parade, but this book didn't inspire me very much, in contrast to just about every other book of hers that I've read so far. The love story and the 2 main characters are very good, but the plot with the villain had more holes than a fishnet stocking, and the fight scenes between the heroine and the villain are completely implausible.  

The plot of the story involves a part-Chinese, part-English young woman, Ying-ying, who grew up in China in the Imperial Court in the latter half of the 19th century, and who speaks perfect English thanks to an English tutor who teaches her all about England. She has also learned a vast repertoire of Oriental fighting skills from her Chinese nanny, who apparently believed that women should NOT be helpless homebodies. The hero is an English spy who lives mostly in India but undertakes secret expeditions into the wild western province of China that was formerly known as Chinese Turkestan. The two meet while Ying-ying is dressed as a boy (so she can go riding about the various towns in Chinese Turkestan, which is governed by her step-father, to secretly check up on the local bigwigs' allegiance to the Emperor.)  They fall in love, but neither one learns the other's true identity until much later, and they separate because they don't trust each other, but neither one can forget the other. They meet up again in England, where Ying-ying is sent by her step-father to recover a couple of engraved jade tablets that supposedly will tell him where a great treasure can be located. The arch-villain Lin also encounters them in England, but I'm not really sure what his actual role in the story is, besides providing the author opportunities to describe Chinese-style fighting between Lin and Ying-ying, and to get the hero and heroine closer together. I think the author could have easily dispensed with the villain altogether - Ying-ying has plenty of opportunities to demonstrate her skills without his presence in the story.

The descriptions of Chinese Turkestan and the people there are wonderfully vivid, and are the best part of the book.