General Fiction (Adult)/Historical Fiction/ Mystery & Thriller/ Sci-Fi
Pub date: 14 January 2027
4/5 ⭐️
Summary:
You aren’t a real person until you have a secret …
Growing up in the Squares, Dre Archer was always told human history was over. Until the day she is plucked from all she knows, and recruited as governess to an enigmatic five-year-old boy. Albie is rash, emotionally obtuse, and possibly a genius. He also believes the year is 1884—two centuries before Dre was born. Everyone working at his family’s grand Victorian manor strives to maintain the illusion, keeping the modern world safely outside their doors. Dre is expected to follow along and not ask questions.
At first, Dre works hard to embody her role as ‘Miss Archer’, with comportment lessons and corsets. But somewhere along the way, the performance begins to feel real—as does her bond with this singular boy. Slowly she is overwhelmed by questions: Why the weird adherence to the 19th century, when it’s the dawn of the 22nd? Why has she never met Albie’s elusive parents? Who are her shadowy employers? And what is her job, really?
In her mounting determination to unlock these mysteries, Dre finds herself flouting the draconian rules of the house. As a series of Russian doll-like revelations brings her closer to the truth, Dre must go to dangerous lengths to protect her young charge, who she has, without quite meaning to, come to love as her own.
Miss Archer is an audaciously original and propulsive debut that deftly explores our yearning for the analogue world as we tumble into the future, and asks what it truly means to be human.
Review:
“I devoured that sort of thing when I was twelve or thirteen. Gothic spires and sexual ghosts. Men who cried principled tears in their highback armchairs. But I didn’t want to be the governess. I wanted to be one of their dead wives, mad and ravishing. Maybe I still do.”
I’m not entirely sure how to feel about this book, and it’s incredibly hard to talk about it without revealing any of the twists.
On one hand it had me gripped and guessing from the start, but the world building felt very underdeveloped. This might be due to the overwhelming amount of ideas that the author went in with. There might just be too many. There’s layers upon layers upon layers.
The dystopian future did feel like something we’re very quickly careening towards (scary but the logistics and timeline of it are left very vague), but there wasn’t nearly enough of it for a fully successful juxtaposition with the 19th century. And some of the plot twists definitely landed better than others. The ending also felt a bit too neat and tidy?
However Dre is a compelling main character, her fascination with “old” movies was highly relatable (you will be questioning her choice of songs to sing though). And Albie is equal parts off-putting and endearing (his one sentence chapter “I’m busy with fever” was so unreasonably funny). You do end up rooting, despite the weirdness.
All in all, a fun and quick read that will keeping you going “HUH?????” every other chapter.
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