Mary Kingswood's Blog, page 15

Country Flirt by Joan Smith (1987)

This was a barrel of laughs, and although the hero and heroine get themselves into a rare old muddle through sheer stupidity, and some of the characters are a bit over the top, it’s all so funny that it doesn’t really matter.

Here’s the premise: Samantha Bright has been buried in the country her whole life, and has reached the ripe old age of twenty-six without finding a husband. Part of the problem is that she’s been in love with her neighbour Lord Monteith for years, even though he treats her with negligent familiarity, calling her his country flirt – when he’s even at home, that is, which isn’t often. One day Monteith will marry, he supposes, but not yet, and until then he’s enjoying himself thoroughly, while Sam is languishing into spinsterhood. But into this stasis comes Monteith’s uncle, Lord Howard, who returns home from India with a million pounds in his pocket, determined to marry and sets his sights on Sam. Which of course serves to focus Monteith’s attention properly on her for the first time.

From here on, the plot follows a fairly predictable path. There are some side distractions, like Mrs Armstrong, the retired courtesan that Howard wants to set up as his mistress, but she’s angling for marriage, and Clifford Sutton, the low-key friend and possible suitor of Monteith’s mother, who is herself a central character, constantly manipulating everyone around her in the most outrageous fashion. But Lord Howard is the character who dominates the stage in every scene, completely upstaging the two principals, who seem drab and spiritless by comparison.

I confess to being puzzled by the titles. It’s never mentioned what Monteith’s exact rank is, but since his uncle is Lord Howard, he can only be a duke or a marquess, and since nobody your-graces him, he must be a marquess. Which is pretty high up the pecking order, but no one ever refers to it, or treats the family with the sort of deference that a marquessate would usually engender. Nothing wrong with that, it just struck me as odd. There was one historical misstep – not impossible but something that would have been frowned upon. I don’t want to be too spoilerish, so I’ll just say – marriage to deceased wife’s sister.

This is not the book to read if you want deep character development or oodles of angst, with emotion spilt all over the page. It’s written in the classic tradition of Heyer-esque Regency romps, all froth and silliness, no unseemly lusting, and the headline romance is wrapped up on the last page with the hero sweeping the heroine into his manly arms for a thorough kissing. Although to be fair, there is a sort of an epilogue here.

It’s also not the book to read if you’re a stickler for period-accuracy language, and don’t get me started on the punctuation. If this book has ever seen a proofreader, he or she should be fired immediately. Much of it reads as if it was transcribed from a printed version by optical character recognition, and then simply published. Not good enough. But it’s very funny, and I can forgive a book a great deal if it makes me laugh. The conversations between Sam and Monty, especially in the beginning, before he gets all grumpy and jealous, are hilarious. But there are just too many misunderstandings, and too many errors to give it more than four stars.

The Independent Heiress by Elizabeth Bramwell (2019)

I read one of Elizabeth Bramwell’s books quite a while ago, and enjoyed it, so I don’t quite know why it’s taken me so long to read another but there we are. This was recommended to me as being a light read, and so it is, and very enjoyable too.

Here’s the premise: Lydia Meadows has no desire to marry, and have her husband take everything she owns. Instead, as her father’s sole heir, she’s going to help him manage his various business interests, and perhaps develop a few businesses of her own, too. Her father recognises her talent and encourages her in that direction. And since she’s far taller than the average woman, she’s unlikely to find a husband anyway.

But then Lord Standish intrudes into her orderly existence by falling from his horse during a hunt. Lydia helps to rescue him, and this throws the two together. For his part, William has no intention of marrying, either. Some day, maybe, because as the only son it’s his duty, but surely not yet? But as they gradually learn more about each other and begin, perhaps grudgingly to develop some respect for each other, they realise that they are as alike as chalk and cheese. She is practical and competent to her core, but with a brisk, businesslike manner that may be successful in making deals but doesn’t work socially, while he is the easy-going social animal, who couldn’t organise his way out of a paper bag. And when he tries to prove his ability to manage his own affairs, everything goes horribly wrong. In some ways, they are ideally suited, but are they too unalike to make a match of it?

Well, we know the answer, of course, but watching them reach that point themselves is a delight. I liked the way William learnt to use his injured leg to his own advantage, when it suited him, and I thoroughly enjoyed his inventive ways of dealing with unwanted attentions from young ladies eager to be led to the altar. But along the way, he also learns what it’s like to be confined to the wallflower benches, and discovers that even wallflowers have strong and interesting personalities. It’s not uncommon to see a wallflower become the heroine of a Regency, but it’s unusual to see the plight of them as a group in this way. An interesting insight into Regency life.

The author brings the romance to fruition with a sure hand. I loved that William is attracted to his goddess, and charmingly calls her Artemis, almost from the start, and never wavers in that. I do like a hero who listens to his heart and understands what love is, instead of having it creep up on him as a huge surprise in the final chapter. There are some oddities of language – lived experience? Learning curve? But otherwise nothing horrible tripped me up, and this was a good four stars.

Review: Battling The Bluestocking by Martha Keyes (2023)

I was a bit nervous about reading this because I’ve loved the previous books in the series, and yet this one has one feature that put me off — it’s built around a discussion of Jane Austen’s books. I can’t tell you how tired I am of authors who wheel out Austen’s books in Regencies in a sly (and frankly lazy) nudge to modern readers. However, I should have known that Martha Keyes is cleverer than that, because here Austen’s books are held up as exemplars of the despised novel, and contrasted with the more worthwhile intellectual endeavour of ancient Greek and other classic works. And even if both hero and heroine do come to see the value in Austen, there’s enough debate on other topics here that the book’s theme of reason versus emotion is beautifully illustrated. The hero and heroine play intellectual pingpong over classical works, but when they come to debate the Austen classics, they find themselves drawn into discussing their own feelings in a way that leaves them wide open to falling in love.

Here’s the premise: Phineas Donovan is the intellectual of the family, always with his nose in a book. He’s a bit nervous about taking up a position as tutor to an earl’s son, but how hard can it be? He soon finds he has to be a bit creative about lessons for young George (who sounds a bit dyslexic, perhaps?), but the biggest difficulty is the overt hostility of George’s older sister, Lady Sarah Danneville. But she’s a bluestocking, so she likes books just as much as Phineas does, and the two are soon sparring over works of ancient Greek, and then challenging each other to read samples of the despised romantic novel.

The plot unrolls fairly predictably from here on, as the two gradually learn to appreciate each other’s minds and bodies in equal measure. But Lady Sarah is the daughter of an earl and Phineas is the younger son of an admiral, with neither an independent fortune or a proper career. He’s a tutor with a curacy at the local church, so any match between them is unthinkable – isn’t it?

And here’s where Sarah does the stupid heroine thing, in deciding that she can’t possibly have Phineas so she’ll marry the exact opposite – an older man who already has an heir, so she’ll still have the freedom to be herself and not be tied to the domestic sphere. And her parents have found the very man, so how can she refuse? Oh dear.

Needless to say, things get sorted out in the end, although frankly the ending was a bit soggy, when everyone magically falls into line, and there’s one situation that I strongly disliked. I know it’s meant to be cute and all, but I positively hate it when deceit, even when it’s kindly meant, is practised on one of the main characters. Just be honest and reveal the good news straight away, instead of allowing that character to wallow in misery a moment longer than necessary. And the epilogue was just too sweet for my tastebuds. I know lots of readers love schmaltzy epilogues, but I’m not one of them.

Some other issues that got between me and wholehearted enjoyment of this particular book. I’m really not a fan of the duel viewpoint first person narration. When every paragraph is ‘I did this and that…’, it becomes hard to know which I is being spoken of, and yes, I know every chapter is headed with the appropriate character name, and it’s entirely my own fault for not reading the headings but I don’t, and so I regularly have to do a double-take to work out whose head we’re in. Mea culpa.

The other big issue with this book is the sheer volume of Americanisms peppering it. I’ve never noticed this in Martha’s books before, apart from the odd one or two, but here they’re everywhere, including pinkies, off of, write someone, go do something and absent used as a preposition. And shall absolutely everywhere. Does it matter? Of course not, and 99% of readers won’t even notice, but I do, and it makes it difficult to immerse myself fully in the story. It’s particularly disappointing when the author’s evocation of the Regency era is so magnificent in every other respect.

But in every other way, this book is well up to the author’s usual standards. Both Phineas and Sarah are well-drawn and fully-rounded characters, their relationship develops slowly and believably, and it’s easy to root for them. The dialogue is so satisfyingly sparky between them, and the author manages something that so few others achieve – her intellectual characters are genuinely knowledgeable and quick-witted. So many authors tell us their characters are clever, but very few manage to show it as well as is done here.

Martha Keyes is a brilliant writer and I highly recommend all her books, but for me those Americanisms and the slightly soggy ending keep it to four stars this time.

Review: Child of Summer by A T Abbott (2022)

This is a most unusual book – one with no reviews or ratings on Amazon or Goodreads (at the time I read it). That means it’s a complete blank slate, and I have no idea what to expect. But the blurb is intriguing and the cover is lovely (and most unusual) so I’ll give it a go.

Almost at once, there’s a problem. The hero, Robert, Viscount Childes, attends a ball. He’s engaged, but he appears to be having a sexual relationship with his future wife, even though he plans to take a trip to India before the wedding, a journey of at least a year. What on earth is she supposed to do if she falls pregnant, and he’s on the other side of the world? Yet he seems quite pleased with himself, and his pal thinks he’s a bit of a lad. I can’t imagine any Regency gentleman with pretensions to honourable behaviour acting that way, yet we’re told throughout the book how honourable he is.

However, off he goes to India, whereupon the neglected lady promptly jilts him and marries someone else (because she was pregnant? We’re not told, but I wouldn’t be surprised). Four years later he returns, now bumped up in rank to the Earl of Hartfield since his father’s death, and attends the same ball and sees a lady there he danced with four years ago, Eveline Parish. Then she was lively and friendly; now she’s cold and distant. There was some scandal about her, but he doesn’t know what. Whatever could have caused such a great change in her?

When Rob bumps into her (literally) she’s being verbally set upon by a group of women, including Rob’s former betrothed. Rob rescues her, but she’s offhand with him. He’s intrigued by her, and sets out to befriend her, even though he doesn’t really know what the scandal is surrounding her. This doesn’t go too well, and ends up with Evie being on the receiving end of even more abuse from women. Whatever did she do?

And all the while, Rob and Evie are drawn to each other and very rapidly falling in love – or rather in lust, because this is not a sex-free read. There are some surprisingly passionate kisses early on, with the inevitable effects, and later in the book there are some long-drawn-out graphic sex scenes, which I confess I skipped over. There’s also a fair amount of robust language, of anachronistic forthrightness, including the f-word. We’re definitely not in Kansas here. I don’t mind that, although it does knock me right out of any semblance of Regency atmosphere, especially when it’s the ladies running around shouting ‘Bollocks!’.
What I did mind, very much, was the title errors. It’s not that there was much that was outright wrong, exactly, just that it was confusing. I spent quite a lot of time trying to work out exactly why Evie’s mother is Lady Eugenia, especially as her brother is Sir Elias Stone. That’s not impossible, but it’s very, very odd. Titles like Lady Eugenia, Lord Edward and Lady Jane are not simply polite forms of address to the upper classes, they actually mean something. Only the daughter of a duke, marquess or earl can call herself Lady Eugenia. Only the younger son of a duke or marquess can call himself Lord Edward, and since he’s the son of an earl, his correct title is the Honourable Edward Ainsley. And ‘Lady Jane’ is the Dowager Countess, so her correct title is Lady Highfield.

However, most readers won’t notice any of that, or the plethora of Americanisms, because after a moderately slow start, things ramp up pretty fast in the second half of the book, and this is where the author’s talent absolutely shines through. When it comes to emotionally fraught interchanges, I’d say she’s almost up there with Mary Balogh (and that’s high praise indeed). The whole story of Evie’s disgrace is gradually unravelled and dealt with, and although the method of dealing with it is fairly melodramatic, it had me cheering, I can tell you.

There are no other books listed under the author’s name, so I’m going to assume it’s her first published work. As such, it shows a great deal of promise. However, the plot is a little uneven, with long, rather dull spells punctuated by high drama, and I wasn’t enamoured of the amount of lusting the main characters got up to from the start. I strongly disliked the hero’s shaky morality both towards his original fiancee and later towards Evie, especially given her history. A Regency gentleman is supposed to treat a lady with the greatest respect, and his condemnation of his brother for very similar behaviour smacks of hypocrisy. As for Evie, I wasn’t convinced that she would behave that way after her previous experience. I wondered why her previous disgrace was such a secret; it was so dreadful that she was supposedly permanently ruined, yet no one seemed to know exactly what had happened (or at least no one told Rob). That seemed odd. I would also have liked to know a bit more about the former fiancee, and what happened to her after Rob left her to go jauntering around the world.

Despite these minor issues, the strong emotional scenes stand out, and I adored the discussion about Cicero – I love a heroine who can hold her own in an intellectual discussion, and I applaud the author for stepping off the well-trodden path (if I never see another sly reference to Jane Austen in a Regency romance, I’ll be very pleased). These are the sort of little details that make a book memorable, for me. I’d be happy to read more by this author. In a more established author, the title errors and the odd behaviour of both hero and heroine would keep this to three stars, but I’m always prepared to give a debut the benefit of the doubt, and those emotional scenes packed a big punch, so I’ll settle for four stars.

Review: A Fair Judge by Christina Dudley (2022)

If there’s one word that sums up this book, it’s ‘charm’. This is an absolutely lovely read, a delightful short read that weaves it’s way through the characters and events of the Hapgoods of Bramleigh series with a very deft hand.

It focuses on Norman DeWitt, brother of Rosemary and Roscoe and second son of Sir Cosmo, a still, silent sort of man who drifts uncomplainingly through his rather ordinary life until he is jolted out of his rut by a chance encounter. A young lady in trouble spurs him to become a rescuing hero, much to his own astonishment, and what a young lady she is! Norman has never been this drawn to a woman before and he’s determined to get to know her better. But there’s a catch, and it’s not one that can readily be solved.

I won’t spoil the surprise by saying any more, but this novella is free to anyone who signs up for the author’s mailing list, so there’s no excuse not to rush off and get hold of it. Five stars.

Review: Reluctant Bride by Joan Smith (2012)

This is not the book for anyone who is a stickler for historical language or plot plausibility. It is, however, wildly funny, and although I rolled my eyes at something or other on every third page, along would come another laugh out loud moment, and so I just kept on reading. It’s outrageously silly, but it doesn’t matter a bit.

Here’s the premise (such as it is): Lizzie Bladen and her Aunt Maisie are struggling to keep their heads above water at their impoverished and heavily mortgaged family home, while Lizzie’s younger brother Jeremy is away at Oxford. Lizzie decides she’ll have to sell her dowry, a historic and valuable diamond necklace. On route to her uncle, who has offered to buy it, their carriage is overturned by a fast-driving baronet, Sir Edmund Blount, and in the confusion the necklace is stolen. Lizzie and Edmund are at odds instantly, but he chivalrously decides to help them recover the necklace, and thereby sets in train a glorious sequence of ever more unlikely escapades as they chase around the country in pursuit of a wall-eyed man in a green coat who is the chief suspect.

So far, so promising, but the real fly in the ointment for me was that the book I read immediately before this was another Joan Smith effort, called Love’s Way. And here’s the kicker – its plot is almost identical to this one. The heroine (and her aunt!) are in dire financial straits, thrown together with an antagonistic hero with whom the heroine feuds in melodramatic fashion throughout the book. And although this book at least has some indication that the hero is actually falling for the heroine, she never admits to it, and (just like the previous book) there’s no romantic ending just a shrug and I-suppose-we’d-better-get-married air of resignation. So although I enjoyed the whole thing quite a lot, it was rather spoilt for me by the repetition.

There is one element of the story that I found very funny, but purists might take exception to. Sir Edmund, having been a contented bachelor for a number of years, and having no intention ever to marry, has developed the habit of seeking out female company of a certain type when he’s travelling. He doesn’t stray from the moral code when he’s at home where he’s a respectable figure and wants to keep his reputation, but when he’s away from home he likes a bit of how’s-your-father. This leads to some very funny moments when he’s trying to arrange something, or is actually about to embark upon it, when Lizzie interrupts. Naturally, he gets quite cross about this.

In fact, Edmund’s moods are one of the most entertaining aspects of the book, for they veer about quite dramatically in response to whatever is going forward, and whether he sees it as positive or negative, and although Aunt Maisie soon sees what he’s about, Lizzie never does, and fails to notice that Edmund’s moods are increasingly concerned with her attitude to him.

It’s all great fun, despite being ridiculously implausible, but the sense of deja vu keeps it to four stars for me.

Review: Love’s Way by Joan Smith (1982)

This was a complete riot. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but oh boy, was it funny! The hero and heroine were at odds throughout the book, so they threw everything at each other, verbally, and it was glorious.

Here’s the premise: Chloe Barwick is struggling to manage the run-down family estate since her younger brother, Edward, who should be in charge, is obsessed with becoming a poet instead. While he is dreaming up lurid verses and hobnobbing with the Lake District’s resident poets, she’s left to cope with making the sheep raising pay, and trying to scrape together enough money to pay the mortgage every quarter. Aunt Nora, who lives with them, isn’t much help, either. The neighbours, drunken Lord Carnforth and his seemingly innocent daughter Emily are even worse off, living in absolute squalor. So when Emily starts calling on a daily basis and hanging around the interesting Edward, a marriage is out of the question. Edward must marry money to rescue the estate. Chloe herself could rescue them, of course, if only she’d marry Tom Carrick and his five thousand a year. It’s a pity she can’t stand him.

Into this stasis appears the explosive person of Jack Gamble, Lord Carnforth’s nephew, the traditional black sheep, so beloved of Regencies, who’s just returned from India with a fortune in his pocket (another very traditional trope). He immediately sets up Chloe’s back by frightening Emily into running away to Chloe and Edward’s house, from where Jack, in a towering rage, removes her, sets her up with a chaperone and sets about turning her into a pampered rich lady. She seems to enjoy the attention and he seems to be seriously wooing her, and even offers for her, before beginning to discover that behind the barbed tongue, Chloe has a lot of sterling qualities and is far more interesting than ingenue Emily.

This sets up a nice merry-go-round of romances. Will Emily accept Jack’s offer? Will Edward care if she does? Will Chloe see the good in Jack or end up with uninteresting Tom Carrick and his five thousand pounds? The book is a vintage era Regency, so the romance is desperately short on emotion (I don’t think the hero and heroine ever actually come out and say they love each other). Instead, it’s high on the froth of banter and light-heartedly swapping from one potential mate to another, almost as if it doesn’t quite matter. And when they decide that, no, they won’t marry that person after all, it’s a simple matter of saying so. This is not consistent with any Regency code of conduct that I know.

In the background is the villain of the piece, who, in a light-hearted and jovial way, is determined to turn this corner of the Lake District into a vulgar theme park, with every possible tasteless attraction. The Barwick’s house is so run-down that he thinks he’ll just buy it when they inevitably default on the mortgage, knock it down and build a road through it. This part of the story wasn’t so interesting that I wanted to read every last detail of the plans, but it was definitely more interesting than the endless descriptions of the scenery and how to run a sheep farm. All this might have been more convincing without the mention of skunks harassing the sheep and cardinals singing melodically in the beech tree. Nor was I impressed by Edward deciding to organise a fox hunt in the middle of summer (I’m sure the farmers would be thrilled to have the hunt rampaging through their fields and trampling crops and scaring the sheep – save it for the winter months, please).

But you know, none of this mattered tuppence, because the book is *funny*. It’s written in first person for Chloe (‘I went…’ instead of ‘she went…’), and that means the reader is right inside Chloe’s gloriously witty, curmudgeonly and downright cynical head. It’s wonderful stuff, and if I would have liked a little bit less of the theme park villainy and a little more emotion, I can accept that the book is very much of its era, where the characters are slightly cartoonish and not the fully rounded type we expect nowadays. Despite the skunks and cardinals, the sheer enjoyment of the banter makes this a five star read for me.

Review: The Baronet’s Lady Biologist by Alissa Baxter (2022)

I always look forward to a new Alissa Baxter book. There are very few authors I trust to provide not just a wonderful story but a truly immersive Regency experience, but she’s one of them. This is the third book in the series about the scientific Linfield family, and heroine Georgiana’s interest is in butterflies and insects, and pretty much everything else of a biological nature. There are not many Regency romances where the sentence ‘He had delivered the […] preserved caterpillars to Linfield House’ might appear, but I love a heroine who has her head filled with more than just the latest bonnets.

Here’s the premise: like her sister Harriet before her, science is the great love of her life, and a husband would only feature if he could be useful to her and finance her travels to collect specimens. Not for her the traditional female domain of home and children. She wants a different sort of husband, one doting enough to indulge every whim of hers. Whoever she marries, it definitely won’t be obnoxious Sir Giles Tavistock, whose arrogance led him to suppose she was setting her cap at him, and to say so where she could overhear him. So not even his handsome face or his own interest in entomology makes him palatable to her.

Georgiana is quite happy to go to London and participate in the season – she might meet that doting potential husband, after all. It takes her away from her beloved butterflies and the countryside, but when she discovers her painting skills are in demand to record the collection of an elderly cousin, and then Sir Giles’s, she’s quite reconciled. Of course, we can see where this is going, and just in case we were in any doubt, there’s an instant attraction between her and Sir Giles. Even though he’s not looking for a wife at all, and she’s looking for a very particular kind of husband, they’re drawn to each other.

Needless to say, there are plenty of obstacles to be swerved around before they realise they’re meant for each other. There are some misunderstandings, but quite believable ones, and not a case of a character simply jumping to an illogical conclusion or taking one person’s word for it. They were also cleared up relatively quickly. There was a rival for Georgiana’s affections, and a nice little subplot involving Napoleon – which was true! And kudos to the author for weaving that little gem into the story in a completely natural way, but then she’s always been brilliant at finding unusual nuggets of research to inspire her writing. A previous book had loads about authentic Regency-era curries, for instance.

Of the characters, Georgiana is a very sympathetic heroine. The modern reader can only feel for her, unable to pursue her chosen scientific research openly, and completely bound by the conventions of the day to the domestic sphere. Her attempts to travel and explore the world are very understandable, but her acceptance of reality is sensible, if a little bit sad. I really wanted her to have her trip to Italy, but Regency women just couldn’t have it all, and social norms (not to mention the lack of contraception) kept them at home. Well done the author for tackling that dilemma honestly.

Sir Giles is my favourite kind of hero, the intelligent but silent type, who may be slow to fall in love, but when he knows his own mind, pursues his goal with steady determination. There were a lot of minor characters, too many for me to keep straight, and I wasn’t totally sure of the purpose of all of them, but they certainly made the story feel realistic. Too many Regencies have the same small group of characters who meet up wherever they go, and London seems to be otherwise empty.

This is a lovely traditional read, which follows the time-honoured path of the London season, balls, house parties and drives with eligible gentlemen in curricles, with the added spice of the scientific background and a nice little mystery going on. My over-sensitive pedantometer wasn’t triggered by any anachronisms (although I had to look up ‘Inuit’, which I wasn’t sure was in use then – but it was!). My only grumbles, such as they are, are that I would have liked a bit more passion from the principals (they were a little too restrained for my taste), and the book felt a little samey. Being the third in the series, and all of them featuring a heroine with a strong interest of her own, a strong, silent scientist hero and a somewhat narrow range of settings, there’s a slight sense of deja vu. But that doesn’t matter because the author’s wonderful writing works its magic to make the book a pleasure to read. A good four stars.

I beta-read this book a long time ago, and received a free copy of the pre-release version, but my opinions are my own.

Review: A Dangerous Nativity by Catherine Warfield (2016)

This is a short book that packs in a huge amount of backstory, so much so that it deserved a somewhat more expansive treatment (it almost felt like Reader’s Digest-style condensed novel), but even so, it works pretty well.

Here’s the premise: William Landrum, the Earl of Chadbourn has been drawn by the death of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Murnane, to take care of the duke’s affairs. This means the distraught widow, William’s sister, and his nephew, the new duke, since William is the boy’s guardian. There’s also the neglected ducal estate, and he’s heartened to find that a neighbouring estate is in much better and more productive order. Perhaps he can pick up some tips from the owner or manager? But all he finds is Catherine Wheatly, her two lively young brothers and her reclusive father. They’re not particularly friendly, and everyone tells him that the two families never, ever so much as acknowledge each other. Yet they seem ordinary enough, and they share the family name of Wheatly. What is the mystery behind the feud?

Actually, the mystery isn’t terribly difficult to work out, but I did find the feud harder to understand. Again, I think a longer book would have drawn out the nuances of the situation with more depth, because the lingering consequences are quite serious and yet William manages to resolve everything rather easily. In particular, the traumatised widow and the young duke are brought round without too much difficulty. I didn’t find that entirely credible. I also wondered at Catherine’s father being so dogmatic about maintaining the feud. He seems in many ways to be the rational one of the family. And how was it that all these family ‘secrets’ could be so secret after all this time, when the locals would have known exactly what went on? The servants always know.

Nevertheless, despite these quibbles, I enjoyed the read very much. I liked that William knew what he wanted almost from the first moment he saw Catherine (I love a hero who sets his mind on the heroine instantly and won’t be shaken from his path). Catherine was a very down-to-earth lady, and since she knew her own history, her reservations were understandable. Only the shortness of the book, which condensed a lot of interesting story into a format too short for it, keeps this to four stars.

Review: Season for the Heart by Elizabeth Chater (1982)

This book was so much fun! It was completely frivolous and silly, and yet there was something about it that just resonated with me. It helped that the hero is my favourite kind – sensible, honourable and witty, just the sort of man a hard-pressed heroine wants to be able to turn to in a crisis.

Here’s the premise: Miss Melpomene (!) Rand, called Pommy for short, is an orphan. Raised by her classical scholar grandfather, and now living as an unpaid and badly treated servant in her aunt and uncle’s house, she’s sent out in the rain to the local inn to collect a parcel from the incoming mail coach. Sheltering in the inn’s common room, she overhears a plot to hold up her uncle’s carriage the following day and steal the jewels. Running for help, she instead runs straight into the protective arms of a mysterious stranger…

Well, this is a Regency romance, so naturally the stranger will turn out to be a nobleman – the Earl of Austell, in fact, who summarily deals with the would-be highwaymen and sends Pommy straight home to get dry. When he discovers she’s forgotten the parcel she was sent to collect, he delivers it himself, and sees just how badly she is treated by her uncle and his family. Having discovered a mutual love of romantic fiction, he rescues Pommy and sweeps her off to London to be a companion to his widowed sister-in-law, collecting another stray young lady along the way. All this he takes in his stride – I do like a competent hero.

From here on, the plot becomes increasingly convoluted, involving the stray, her father and a discarded suitor of hers, Pommy’s horrid relations and her very un-horrid military uncle, and the earl’s sister-in-law and nephew, culminating in the obligatory kidnapping. Why is it that Regencies of this era always feel compelled to stuff in a kidnapping at the end? Fortunately, this one ends more in farce than anything else – in fact, the second half of the book is delightfully funny, with some genuine laugh-out-loud moments.

As for the romance, it’s obvious that these two are attracted to each other right from the start, and hooray for a hero who knows his own mind and doesn’t waver in the slightest. There’s a lot of muddle between them about what they really feel, with a great deal of miscommunication, and yes, it could all have been sorted out if they’d just sat down and talked to each other, which is usually a big red flag for me. But the whole thing is done in such a whimsical, light-hearted way, almost fairytale-like (and the parallels with Cinderella are obvious), it was easy to just roll with it. There was only one moment when I felt Austell behaved badly, when he first proposes to Pommy, but he makes it seem like such an off-the-cuff thing that she doesn’t take him seriously. A hero should never propose without explaining to the heroine that yes, he does love her, however spontaneous it might seem to be.

One oddity – we never quite know exactly how old the two are supposed to be. His sister-in-law says there’s almost a twenty year age gap, but there’s no particular reason why there needs to be. He says he’s had twelve seasons, so if he was up at Oxford, say, until he was twenty-one, that would make him in his early thirties. Pommy is spoken of as if she’s quite young, but I like to think of her in her early twenties, so the gap would be no more than ten years, and perfectly acceptable.

A couple of historical errors jumped out at me. The sister-in-law (the widow of the earl’s brother) is a duke’s daughter and the brother was a plain Mister, so she would be Lady Aurora Masterson, and definitely not Lady Masterson, as she is called throughout. And then there’s the question of whether Austell would marry his sister-in-law. Since they fall within the church’s proscribed levels of consanguinity, such a marriage would be frowned on. Legally, it’s possible, and two of Jane Austen’s brothers married the sister of their dead wife, but the marriage would be voidable – any challenge would render it void and the children illegitimate, and that’s not something that a peer could contemplate. Another small point – a hitching post is a term not common before 1850. In the country, a groom would be found to hold a horse, and in town street urchins did the job.

The book finishes in fine style, with a couple of satisfying side romances and a properly romantic denouement for the main couple, although like all books of this era, everything ends pretty much straight after the proposal. No schmaltzy epilogues here. Books of this age don’t always wear well, but this was one that I loved from start to finish, with clever dialogue and an excellent style of writing that reminded me of Georgette Heyer. Highly recommended. Five stars.