Miss Cassidy: Book 1
Publication Date: September 16, 2025
A Scottish governess arrives in Singapore to take up her new post, only to find a host of problems await that require her very unique skills in this award-winning and incredibly entertaining historical fantasy novel.
There has never yet been a crisis that Miss Leda Cassidy hasn’t been able to fix, be it a lovelorn young charge, perpetually distracted students, or an unruly and malevolent ghost. When she arrives at her new employer’s home and discovers the family is being terrorized by a vampiric spirit, she sets about righting the situation without delay.
But it seems that as soon as she puts one supernatural creature to rest, another appears to take its place. A woman’s work is truly never done, is it?
When she meets Mr. Kay, a widower whose greatest worry appears to be making matches for his twin daughters, she is happy to take a post that might provide her a bit of respite from her more “spirited” friends. But she soon realizes that the Kays are in far more trouble than she realized—and that her presence in their home might have put the family she’s grown to cherish in even more jeopardy. Will she be able to save them all before it’s too late, or has she finally stumbled upon the one problem she isn’t able to solve?
When a Scottish governess takes up her new post in Singapore, only to find a myriad of issues that require her rather unique skills, a fascinating and delightfully unusual story ensues in Meihan Boey’s The Formidable Miss Cassidy.
The book had a nice flow, and the pacing was easy to follow. I liked the title of each chapter and how each helps tell the story. There were no strange parts in the book where the reader struggles to follow the plot.
The characters were well-developed, funny, no-nonsense, and charming. I liked the sense of magic and otherworldliness that was the premise of the story. I don’t understand the use of magic, and the occult (if that word is appropriate for this), but I respect it, and I thought the story that the author weaved using this information made for a fantastic read.
With rich characters and settings, magic, ghosts, and more, The Formidable Miss Cassidy is a delightful historical fantasy read.
Meihan Boey is the author of the novels The Formidable Miss Cassidy, which was the co-winner of the 2021 Epigram Books Fiction Prize and winner of the 2022 Singapore Book Award for Best Literary Work; and The Enigmatic Madam Ingram, a finalist for the 2023 Epigram Books Fiction Prize; as well as the science fiction novella The Messiah Virus. She is also the vice president of the Association of Comic Artists of Singapore and has scripted several comics, including Supacross and The Once and Marvellous DKD. She is a dedicated comic book and manga fan, an enthusiastic gamer, a persistent triathlete, and not yet a Super Saiyan, though she keeps trying.
