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Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Vampire Menace #LoveBooksTours



I'm pleased to be on the blog tour for this book today. 

Blurb

The intrepid librarian Shona McMonagle, erstwhile Marcia Blaine Academy prefect and an accomplished linguist and martial artist, finds herself in an isolated French mountain village, Sans-Soleil, which has no sunlight because of its topography. It’s reeling from a spate of unexplained deaths, and Shona has once again travelled back in time to help out.
Forging an uneasy alliance with newly widowed Madeleine, Shona is soon drawn into a full-blown vampire hunt, involving several notable villagers, the world-renowned soprano Mary Garden – and even Count Dracula himself. Will Shona solve the mystery, secure justice for the murder victims and make it through a deathly denouement in the hall of mirrors to return to present-day Morningside Library?

Review

The book begins with Shona McMonagle finding herself in the past not knowing when or where in the world she is, but finds a note saying "Remember you must die"........ after stepping out of a coffin. So begins the mystery!

Shona is definitely her own woman and it was nice to have a heroine who was in the 50+ age bracket for a change. Goodness what a fabulous school Marcia Blaine Academy must be as Shona can turn her hand to anything and knows no fear. When I began the book I was wondering if she was going to be more of a Johnny English character. But I was wrong, as she can take on an assassin not only with bare hands but also with her acerbic tongue. Fearing she had been cast to the past by Miss Blaine with no safety net, I was reassured when Shona tried to spend to freely and her purse became firmly shut! Miss Blaine it would appear did have her back.

Keen to establish she is Scottish and not English, her witticisms were unparalleled in my reading experience. She also has a ready knowledge of history which was an education in itself. Not to mention the clarification provided around vampires.

Having read Jasper Fford I can see why the author has been compared to him, she has the same quirky, other world presence in the book. This is the second book in the series - however, I had not read the first one and the book can be read as a standalone.

If you are looking for an escapist read which has been written with intellect and wit, then this is the book for you. I miss Shona already and look forward to meeting with her again.

I'm giving this fabulous book 5 out of 5 stars. My thanks to Love Book Tours for the invite to the blog tour.

Author

Olga Wojtas is an unconventional – and very witty – writer of postmodern crime fiction whose surrealist humour has been compared to the likes of PG Wodehouse, Jasper Fforde and the Marx Brothers. Her debut novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar, has been published in the UK and US to great critical acclaim – being longlisted for the inaugural Comedy Women in Print Prize 2019, shortlisted for a CrimeFest Award, and named as one of the best mysteries and thrillers of the year by Kirkus.
A journalist for more than 30 years, Olga was Scottish editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement before she began adding creative writing to her portfolio. She won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2015 and has had numerous short stories and several novellas published. Olga lives in Edinburgh, where she once attended James Gillespie’s High School – the model for Marcia Blaine School for Girls, which appears in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the novel that inspired the Miss Blaine’s Prefect series.
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