From Laura LaVelle, Wonder Shuffle's Culture Editor:

Checking the List Twice

For fans of Downton Abbey…Carols and Chaos is set in the same rose-tinted alternative time frame (albeit a hundred or so years earlier) in which the aristocrats take a benevolent interest in the lives and loves of their servants. 

The good people here are perfectly kind and considerate, and the brutal realities of the harshness of life “downstairs” are glossed over. Harmless escapism or a more worrisome historical falsity?

Either way, the upwardly mobile Kate Darby (lady’s maid with ambitions to own a dress shop) and Matt Harlow (valet with an ambition of his own tailor’s shop) have an adventure involving a missing footman and a counterfeiting scheme, while falling in love over the Christmas holiday in Shackleford Park, England, 1817.

It’s all rather silly but entertaining enough, and it’s hard not to root for Kate and Matt as they solve a mystery, seek to rescue their friend, and work out their future plans in a mutually satisfactory way. (If you are looking for a more realistic look at life as a servant during the Regency period, Jo Baker's Longbourn depicts its poverty, disease, filth, and extremely hard work.)

HOW TO PURCHASE: AMAZON

NOVEL: Carols and Chaos

AUTHOR: Cindy Anstey

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2018

IMAGE: Book cover, Macmillan