I feel like historical romance only lightly applies to this book. It was more of like a historical fiction/mystery kind of thing. Harry becomes enchanted with Mary, but mostly because he wants to save her/help her claim her fortune. However, Harry is pretty fickle and it doesn't take much for him to forget about Mary throughout the entire novel. Honestly, Harry spends more time talking about his aunt, Lois, who is only a year older than him. They have this super weird dynamic and it's almost like the romance portion applies to them. I mean to the point that Mary and John, Lois's husband, are jealous of the dynamic between the two. 

 So we have that weird dynamic playing out with Harry and Lois and we also have this mystery surrounding Mary's fortune. Of course the mystery is a lot of why doesn't she seem eager to claim said fortune. We then have Harry involved in a case that becomes connected to Mary. We figure out that a lot of the characters are hiding secrets that are about to come to light. We also have a weird section with a ghost story. It felt like so much was thrown into this and none of it made any sense. I don't think truly anything happened until the end of the story and even that was weird. I feel like three stars is a bit generous for this one...