After struggling a bit with the first book in this series, I decided to relax and accept the fact that this series features modern mysteries in historical clothing. Thus With a Kiss I Die is definitely a better experience than A Daughter of Fair Verona; I had great fun with it. But if you aren’t willing to embrace its ahistorical nature and roll with the punches, this novel will be just as big of a struggle for you as the first one was to me.

When we last left our heroine, Rosaline “Rosie” Montague, she had fallen in love with Lysander of the House of Mackretti in spite of her vow to be single and chaste forever. This is bad news, as she had been tricked into marrying the brooding and scarred Escalus, “Cal”, the Prince of Verona, who has placed her in a compromising position to get an engagement out of her. Worse, when she sneaks out to kiss Lysander and endangers her reputation, she ends up with Cal in her arms – – and he suggests she “kisses by the book.” Her father catches them in time, but she also manages to kick Cal in the “hairy hangings.” Rosaline is thus in a deep funk when the family is invited to spend the weekend at her fiancé’s family manor by his sister, Isabella.

There, Rosie is offered a new and abrupt out by an unexpected party – the ghost of Cal’s father and previous King of Verona, Escalus the Elder, who was drugged and stabbed to death in his own bed. He appears to her and asks her to help him figure out who murdered him. If she succeeds, he will fulfill her only request: to be united with her true love. Since she brought in Verona’s first serial killer just months before, surely Rosie won’t have a problem figuring out who killed the king. He gives her only one clue – it was a man with a horrible face. The suspects are legion – and in the end, the answer to Rosie’s request for a union with her true love is a lot less clear than she once thought.

I struggled with a few of the same problems in Thus with a Kiss I Die as I did in A Daughter of Fair Verona. Again, Cal is not the greatest guy. He impugns Rosie’s virtue right in front of her family and nearly gets stabbed by Romeo as a result, for instance. He apologizes for being a dick, sure, and has a Sad Bad Past, but going in on the father of your fiancée is perhaps a horrible idea – as is mocking the virtue of your future wife. With these context clues it’s easy enough to figure out which of Rosie’s two suitors she ends up happily with, but I couldn’t agree with Dodd’s reasoning here at all.

The uneven tone is a big problem, as well. The first half of the book is all light-hearted family shenanigans, exasperated ghosts and ribaldry. The second portion turns into a literal bloody battle for survival, with Rosie constantly being rescued by the guys in question – this all feels more like the angst-ridden, violence-obsessed Dodd I’m familiar with. The last quarter, again, turns into a light-hearted, banter-filed sex comedy. And yes, the Hamlet allusions are as groanworthy as they sound, as is the book’s constant need to stop and recap what just happened.

The mystery itself, however, saves the novel. It’s filled with twists, turns, unexpected suspects and a genuinely clever ending. If you like having your brain tickled, you should definitely like Thus with a Kiss I Die. For fans of historically accurate mysteries, however, this series continues to be a big miss.

Trigger warning: this book included on-page threats of rapine and includes bloody, explicit on-page childbirth.