Sophia Westlake is an Extraordinary Seer, gifted with the ability to see past, present and future in Dreams and Visions. Her talent led to the destruction of the Caribbean pirates plaguing England’s shipping and gained her renown and the accolades of her peers. But when she accuses a prominent politician, Lord Endicott, of embezzling from the Army, her Dream is “proved” false and she is disgraced, her reputation ruined and her career in the Army’s War Office over.
Humiliated, Sophia returns to London, but Lord Endicott follows her, intent on making her life increasingly miserable. Furious and desperate, Sophia takes the only course left to her: she sets out to discover Lord Endicott’s criminal enterprises, to expose him as the fraud he is and bring him to justice.
Sophia’s allies are few, but loyal. Cecy, her best friend, supports Sophia in her quest, while her cousin Lady Daphne, an irrepressible Extraordinary Bounder, is always ready for a challenge that will strike at Lord Endicott’s heart. And always watching her is the mysterious Mr. Rutledge, who claims to be interested in Sophia’s friendship—and possibly more than that—but who has an agenda of his own.
But as Sophia delves deeper into prophetic Dreams, Cecy and Daphne begin to fear for Sophia’s health and sanity. Driven to collapse by her frequent Dreaming, Sophia is forced to reevaluate her motives: does she want Lord Endicott brought to justice, or is it revenge she seeks? As Sophia draws closer to the secret of Lord Endicott’s criminal enterprise, a counterfeiting ring, his torment of Sophia increases, until the two are bound together by their respective obsessions. Though Sophia insists she is in control, her friends fear she is turning into the man she most hates.
Sophia’s Dreams and Visions are leading her to just one place: the destruction of Lord Endicott. But the cost of her vengeance may be too high—and may demand the sacrifice of her own life.
Wondering Sight, by Melissa McShane
I really loved Burning Bright, the first book in the Extraordinaries series (you can see my review here). The worldbuilding was intriguing and I really enjoyed the magic system that was set up. I wasn’t sure at the end of that one if the next book would be a direct sequel or focus on new characters and I was happy to see that it did, in fact, star a new couple. So I was excited to dig in and read it.
Unfortunately Wondering Sight didn’t work nearly as well for me as the first one did. Sophia is a Seer and the plot revolves around her quest to clear her name and reputation with the War Office by proving that her Dream was not false. This quest is so important to her that she’s willing to cross several boundaries and hardly ever thinks of what effect it’s having on her health or on her relationships with people she supposedly cares about, despite being called out on this several times during the book.
This is the same drive that led her to make new discoveries when she was working in the War Office about how the Seers’ abilities work, but she ends up coming across as selfish and obsessed from the beginning. Her positive characteristics get subsumed by her quest, to the point where I found myself a lot more interested in the secondary characters than I was in her. Mr. Rutledge, for example, is a mysterious and interesting character — but then those questions don’t get fully resolved. I hoped for some clue of what Cecy’s illness might be, even if just in the afterword/acknowledgments, but that was also missing. I also liked Lady Daphne, who is clearly being set up as a potential future heroine in the series; her book will be an enjoyable read, I think (and so clearly my opinion on this book is not changing my mind about the series as a whole, which still offers a very interesting twist on the normal historical romance).
The book at least picked up in the second half, and Sophia became a slightly more likeable character for me. I could still wish for a little more explanation of the difference between Dreams and Visions in the first half of the book, and more interaction with Mr. Rutledge. I doubt I’ll find myself compelled to get the audiobook for this one though, like I did with the first book. I’ll still watch for the next one in the series though, and if you did enjoy the first one I recommend at least giving this one a shot. The secondary characters are worth meeting, and the end is better than the beginning!