Mary Kingswood's Blog, page 18

Review: The Rake’s Challenge by Beth Elliott (2011)

This is one of those books that absolutely shouldn’t have worked for me. It was too tropey for words, and channelled some of my least favourite Georgette Heyers. And yet I enjoyed it a whole heap. So there.

Here’s the premise: Annabelle (Anna) Lawrence is a straight-out-of-school heiress running away from home because of a wicked stepfather trying to push her into an unwanted marriage (I told you it was tropey). Giles Maltravers, the Earl of Longwood and heir to the Duke of Hawkesborough (because of course he is) is a world-weary rake, bored with his fast-living scandalous life of duels (three this year!) and tired of his avaricious mistress. Yes, I know, Heyer wrote this plot several times, but stay with me. Anna has enterprisingly arranged a job as a companion to an elderly lady to tide her over until she can draw on her inheritance and be independent, but, being scrape-prone, she’s missed the stage coach and can’t afford to stay at the inn, so she sets off along a quiet country lane in the middle of nowhere, where she is set upon by two upper-class thugs bent on… well, rape, presumably. Was Hampshire really so lawless that an obviously gently-bred girl would be targeted in that way? Fortunately, along comes our dissolute hero, who surprises even himself by becoming an actual hero and rescuing her.

So far, so unoriginal. This book was first published in 2011 (according to Goodreads) but it feels a lot older than that. Yes, it’s an unoriginal start but I’m always prepared to give a book its initial premise. It’s how things develop that I judge on, and here things look more promising. Giles takes it upon himself to protect Anna, successfully negotiates the hazards of the overnight stay at an inn, and drives her to destination, where there’s a much more interesting setup. Lady Fording, Anna’s elderly employer, turns out to have a daughter who’s an Italian Contessa and a nephew who’s also very Italian and clearly some kind of revolutionary. The three are hoping to return to Italy soon now that things have settled down on the continent a bit. So that’s all a bit different.

Lady Fording is supposedly ill, but happily her indispositions never interfere with the plot. The three decide to decamp from the Hampshire countryside to Brighton for a little shopping and socialising, and they buy a whole new wardrobe for Anna. She’s a little surprised that the paid companion is to be fashionably dressed but she’s young enough not to refuse. And so off they go to Brighton, where everyone turns up – not merely Giles and a couple of cronies, but also his mistress and the two thugs who assaulted Anna, and a mother and daughter determined to hook Giles by any means necessary. And of course the Prince Regent, because what self-respecting Regency romance can visit Brighton without Prinny?

And so the plot trundles on, with Anna falling into one scrape after another, Giles rescuing her in gentlemanly fashion, and his attentions attracting the jealousy of his ex-mistress and the ambitious mama and her daughter. And then there’s the scheme which required the fancy clothes. I’m not quite sure just how much Lady Fordham and the Contessa were involved in all that. Were they complicit, or merely willing dupes? In other hands, this story might have been dull work, but Elliott gives it a light-hearted froth, and the main characters are likeable. Anna is the innocent abroad, not exactly silly but not always wise to the machinations of those around her, although she’s a fast learner.

As for Giles, he’s a charmer right from the start, clearly falling in love with Anna from day 1, yet stoutly refusing to believe it’s anything more than a gentlemanly urge to protect her. Even when the idea of marriage seeps into his brain, he finds all sorts of reasons why it won’t do – he’s too old for her, for heaven’s sake! He’s thirty, not exactly at his last prayers. And although much is made of his scandalous reputation, we never see him as other than honourable. It seems to be a habit with the genre that a man can be described as a rake of the most committed sort, yet behave impeccably throughout. Giles steals one kiss, under provoking circumstances, but is stricken with guilt afterwards, so no, not in the least rakish, and no, I don’t believe for one minute that rakes give up their wicked ways the instant the heroine hoves into view. Not plausible. But, as I said, he’s a charmer, despite the author’s attempts to paint him as a stern sort of man, and I liked his very honest discussion with his father, which was the best scene in the book, with real emotion showing through. I’m not quite sure what he saw in Anna, who seemed a little bit too young and innocent for a sophisticated man-about-town, but he says he’ll never be bored with her, and that’s as good a reason as any. Love is ineffable, after all.

I spotted very few errors. The Duke of Hawkesborough was referred to as Lord Hawkesborough, which is wrong. I baulked at ‘weekend’, but there were pre-Regency usages, although not necessarily in the modern meaning. I also wasn’t sure about the use of fans to convey meanings, which sounds more Victorian to me. Other than that, nothing tripped me up, and the writing was very smooth. It’s not as literate as Heyer (but then, what is? She was one of a kind), but for a Heyer-esque plot with a fine, independent-minded heroine and a charming hero, I can recommend this. Four stars.

Review: The Difficult Life of a Regency Spinster: Jane by Susan Speers (2022)

A difficult one for me to rate. I’m a huge fan of Susan Speers, who is one of the most original Regency authors around. I never quite know what she’ll come up with next, and I love that uncertainty. But it does mean that her books are quite hit or miss with me. This one was more miss than hit, but still an intriguing read.

Here’s the premise: Lady Jane Wilverhampton is living a retired life with her godmother in Scotland, trying to escape the misery of an almost-betrothal that went wrong and family scandal. But when she’s invited to a house party, she meets again the man who broke her heart a number of years ago, when he married someone else. It wasn’t from choice – the two were caught alone in the library together and forced to marry. Now she’s dead, and Angus Killoran is free again, but Jane has made a vow never to marry. Her father and younger brother were both tainted by a kind of madness, and she won’t pass on that bad blood to another generation. But Angus has a younger brother, Fergus, who is supposed to be wooing the daughter of their hosts, a beautiful heiress who will restore the Killoran fortunes. Unfortunately, Fergus has taken a shine to Jane…

The characters here have an awful lot of history. There’s the halcyon days of Jane and Angus’s courtship in France. The misery of his entrapment, forcing him to marry. There’s his wife’s death in a fire, partially destroying the family home. Then there is Jane’s father, and his cruelty to her mother and to the children. Jane’s younger brother has committed murder, although we never hear much about that, and he’s living abroad. And finally, Jane’s older brother, who also vowed never to marry, has broken that vow and is expecting his first child. All of this is revealed piecemeal in flashbacks, which gives the book a disjointed feel.

There are numerous side characters, none of whom are ever brought to the front of the stage so that we can get to know them properly. They simply flit about, moving into Jane’s view and then out again, easily forgotten. I would have liked to know more about the heiress, for instance, and also about young Catriona and her brother. What was the point of them in this story? I have no idea.

As for Angus and Fergus, I never really understood what they were thinking or feeling, or why they didn’t sit down together and talk openly about Jane. It seemed as though they simply drifted about in a helpless, purposeless way. And then there was Jane herself. What did she feel? Where was the emotion? Sometimes she cried and paced about impatiently, but I can’t say that any of the intense feelings she ought to be (and was!) experiencing came across to me. A lot of this was frustrating to me. I’m not a huge fan of angsty heroines, but with the sort of tragedies sweeping through Jane’s life, I wanted to feel her pain more intensely than I did.

If this sounds negative, it’s because there is an unusual and powerful story here that struggled to escape the unemotional tone of the writing. Perhaps other readers can fill in the gaps between what was written and what was beneath the surface, but I found it too difficult. There were moments when the emotion reached me, but mostly it was submerged. The writing was also marred by proofreading errors, with a lot of wayward punctuation, and a few anachronisms (no teddy bears in the Regency, for example). Speers has written some amazing books, but this one was an interesting read that just didn’t quite work for me. I still recommend it, and the whole series, for anyone who’s tired of the usual Regency tropes. Three stars.

Review: Quality Maid by Mira Stables (1973)

This was the third in a cheap box set (three Mira Stables books for a pound, how cool is that?), and for me it was by far the best. Both Emma Disposes and A Match For Elizabeth had flaws which (for me) kept them to four stars. But this one was engaging right from the start, with a delightfully independent heroine, a hero who knows his own mind and some melodrama that, for once, made absolute sense and wasn’t just tacked on to give the hero a chance to be heroic. It also features one of the most original proposal scenes ever, so there’s that.

Here’s the premise: John Longden is minor gentry with a reasonable income of his own, and a wealthy wife. He was blinded in a shooting accident, but he doesn’t repine, and his three grown daughters (Clemency, Prudence and Faith) help him manage. But four years ago, his wife set out on a journey and vanished into thin air, her money is now unavailable to him, and his own investments have gone disastrously wrong. The family is practically destitute, the only valuables remaining are the mother’s jewels.

The daughters, however, are resourceful. They are determined to find genteel employment of some sort, but they need someone to help them with references and the like. Clemency has the bright idea of calling upon their neighbour, Piers Kennedy, a former naval captain and now a sheep farmer and wool merchant, for help. Mr Longden saved his life many years ago, so he will surely feel under an obligation to help them. Her sisters cannibalise their mother’s fine silks and velvets for suitable clothing to rig Clemency out for a formal visit, but it doesn’t go well. The two end up in a battle of wits, he grabs her wrist to stop her leaving and ends up kissing her.

Now, normally I strongly dislike supposed heroes who ruthlessly impose themselves on gently brought up young ladies just because they can, and he has less excuse than most such instances. He doesn’t mistake her for a serving wench, for instance (not that that excuses such behaviour, but given that this book was written fifty years ago, it’s in line with the prevailing morality of romances of the era). But somehow, the way the scene is written makes the kiss almost inevitable, and not as reprehensible as it would otherwise be. In fact, for me it’s the fact that he grabbed hold of her that I find most shocking. A kiss might be construed as a romantic gesture, but a Regency gentleman should never, ever lay a hand on a lady’s person.

From then onward, the lines are drawn. She despises him thoroughly for his reprehensible behaviour (as she should!) and he is riven by guilt and determined to find some way to help the family. And (the part that makes me like him rather a lot) he sees all the positive elements of her actions and is half way to being in love with her before she’s even left the house. Even though he stoutly maintains that he’s never going to marry because reasons, he’s still drifting towards it with every single meeting. And he doesn’t do anything stupid along the way, like kissing her again, for instance.

I’m not going to spoil the plot by telling you how it all turns out. Suffice to say that the missing wife subplot is resolved in a satisfactory way, and ties in neatly with the melodramatic ending, which seems to be de rigueur in books of this era. The hero gets a chance to be suitably heroic, the heroine gets a chance to be suitably resourceful and there’s the most glorious proposal scene which made me laugh out loud. And everything is settled in the best possible way. A lovely traditional read that made me smile all the way through. Five stars.

Review: Georgette And The Unrequited Love by Alicia Cameron (2020)

This was a whole heap of fun. The world’s most disfunctional and embarrassing family, a heroine yearning for a man she briefly exchanged glances with two years ago, a hero yearning for a woman he almost married but discovered was not what he thought, and the house party from hell, with a cast of thousands. So much to love about this book.

Here’s the premise: Georgette Fortune is one of ten daughters of an impoverished baron. Several of them have married already, and their father is keen to be rid of the rest of them, but he’s just about given up on Georgette. At 21, she’s just about on the shelf, and although she’s had an offer or two, she’s refused them because she’s met the love of her life, Lucian, the Marquis of Onslow. They had a brief moment of understanding two years ago, when she was winding up a pompous clergyman for her own amusement, and Lord Onslow overheard and found it amusing too. For a single moment, their eyes locked and Georgette’s heart was lost. Here at last was a man who saw life as she did.

Unfortunately, having discovered this paragon, she learnt that he was deeply in love with Miss Julia White, a great beauty and the success of the season, with a troop of devoted suitors. Surely she won’t refuse Lord Onslow when he offers? But two years later, they’re still not married, and when Lord Fortune decides to hold a house party to jolly along one of the younger daughters’ suitors, both Lord Onslow and Julia White are amongst the guests. There’s also one of Georgette’s own former suitors, the very nice Sir Justin Faulkes, whose only fault, in her eyes, is that he isn’t Lord Onslow.

This is going to be a trying time for Georgette. But she can see that Lord Onslow is still taken with Julia, and that she is also interested in him, but there seems to be some constraint between them. Perhaps Georgette can solve her own problem once and for all by facilitating a reconciliation between these two seemingly star-crossed lovers? Then at least she’d be able to put it behind her. But of course it doesn’t quite work out that way…

This book is such an interesting, not to say downright quirky, mix of humour that verges on farcical together with a depth of emotion in the protagonists that is profoundly moving. Georgette, Lord Onslow and Sir Justin fall into an unusual friendship, all three of them hiding the unrequited love of the title, which leads to some fairly intense exchanges. There are also not one but two side romances, between younger sister Jocasta and Lord Paxton, heir to an earldom, the object of the whole house party, and between two of the other guests, a most unexpected pairing (which is not altogether convincing, in my view).

The farce comes from the Fortune family itself, with the baron who speaks his most crass thoughts out loud, and never considers the effects of his actions on his daughters, and a son who is taking after him. Then there are the remaining sisters, all going their own way without much guidance, and so prone to wildly inappropriate behaviour. And then there’s Castle Fortune, the crumbling medieval pile, gently silting up with dust and broken this and that. The preparations for the influx of visitors has the sisters and the harassed servants rushing round exchanging torn sheets and chipped ewers for good ones, and laying in a supply of extra eggs, and maybe an extra haunch of beef.

Now, I don’t know whether the author has ever sat down to calculate the requirements for a Regency house party, but with close to 30 guests, plus the family, plus the servants plus all those visiting servants (valets and lady’s maids, coachmen, grooms, etc) to be accommodated and fed breakfast, dinner, supper and (apparently) ‘light refreshments’ whenever they’re out playing archery. The amount of food required would be astronomical, and need an army of kitchen maids to prepare. Every time a meal was mentioned, I cringed and wondered what on earth they were eating this time. And then every guest got a bedroom to themselves, and this in a medieval castle, which was set up for communal living in the great hall and a handful of private rooms, if you were lucky, for the family. Even a large Georgian house might only have ten or a dozen bedrooms, and a really grand pile might have twenty or so.

But plausibility isn’t what this is about, and after the initial bumbling preparations and light-hearted air of a rollicking and very amusing read, we are soon plunged into a much more interesting story, where the deep and long-hidden emotions of the principals come boiling to the surface, resulting in odd encounters that ought to have been superficial and polite and instead transformed in a second into fierce quarrels that Lord Onslow and Georgette, in particular, can’t understand. Several times as things develop they find themselves licking their wounds after a particularly violent spat and wondering – what on earth just happened there?

This was all wonderful stuff, and I just loved the gradual deepening of their feelings. Beautifully done. Apart from the unreality of the logistics of the house party, I found nothing to quibble at historically. There were a very few typos, and some odd word choices, which sometimes had me scratching my head to work out what was meant. For instance: ‘One of my sisters will be with her, so do not fear for the conveniences’. Conveniences? Or conventions, maybe, or proprieties? Hard to say.

This is a quirky book, but then I love quirky. It’s also funny and surprising, both of which earn extra brownie points from me. But it’s those intense fallings out between hero and heroine, and the wonderful deep undercurrents of emotion that earn it five stars.

Review: A Woman Of Little Importance by Sheila Walsh (1991)

An interesting, very old-fashioned read. I liked the feisty, speaks-her-mind heroine, although I wasn’t at all sure what she saw in the cranky hero, but the writing was lovely and very Heyer-esque, and Harry, the duke’s young grandson, stole every scene he was in.

Here’s the premise: Charity Wynyate is left (literally) holding the baby when her sister dies in childbirth at the same time as her brother-in-law, Ned, dies at Waterloo. Baby Emily was premature, so it’s a while before Charity can take orphans Emily and her older brother, Harry, back to England. She’s looked after them since Harry was born, but she can’t do it alone, so she takes the children to their paternal grandfather, the Duke of Orme. Since Harry is now his heir, he’ll do what’s right by the children, won’t he? Even though he had quarrelled so badly with Harry’s father that he doesn’t even know of Harry’s existence.

When she arrives at the duke’s London residence, she meets Harry’s uncle, Lord Alistair Ashbourne, who until that moment had believed himself to be the heir to the dukedom. I’m not quite sure how it was that the family knew that Ned was dead but knew nothing of Harry’s existence, since Ned’s family travelled everywhere with him and everyone would have known about him, even if Ned was so careless of his family as not to inform his father of the birth of a new heir, but let that pass. Alistair’s manner is icy towards Charity, since he sees her as an encroaching female of no account, using the children to weasel her way into the duke’s household. The duke is even worse – he’s the archetypal curmudgeonly, gouty duke, shouting at everyone (and I have no fault to find with this, having written a curmudgeonly, gouty duke myself, once).

The duke reluctantly accepts the children, orders Alistair to take them to a country estate of his, and tells Charity to go away – she’s to have nothing more to do with them. A free and frank exchange of views ensues, but dukes will have their way, so the children are packed off to the country and Charity turns, rather unenthusiastically, to considering her own future. Her father has remarried and the stepmother doesn’t want Charity around, so she’ll have to find employment as a governess or companion, but wouldn’t it be handy if that could be somewhere close to the children? She needn’t break her word not to see the children, but she might hear about them sometimes. And by the greatest good fortune, she bumps into an old army friend of poor, deceased Ned, Captain Fitzallan (or Fitz), whose mother just happens to live within a few miles of Ashbourne Grange, where the children are. His mother is happy to include Charity in her giant household while she looks around for work, but first Fitz takes her under his wing and squires her about to fancy parties in London.

This part of the book gave me the heebie-jeebies. A young (well, youngish) single woman being squired about town by a young single man who isn’t even a relative? And not a hint of a chaperon in sight? How did they even get to these parties – in a closed carriage? Eek! But let that pass, too. At least this part enables Charity to meet the lovely Melissa Vane, who just happens to be betrothed to Alistair.

Now, this is something that puzzles me mightily. We know almost from the first moment she appears that Melissa was not particularly interested in Alistair until his older brother died, making him the heir to the dukedom, and she thereafter drew him into her web. So she’s very beautiful, yes, but how could he not see that she’s only after the title? Does he not care? Is there a connection between the families to make a marriage more likely? And how could a sophisticated man about town be drawn in by a cold-hearted ambitious woman? I just can’t imagine what he sees in her, beyond her appearance, and if that were all, he’d be horribly shallow.

Whatever his reasons, this whole section of the book seems to be set up purely to have Charity and Alistair quarrel at Lady Sefton’s ball. He thinks she’s encroaching into society (which she isn’t, she was invited), she thinks he’s an arrogant prig (which he is, because what right has he got to judge her?). But this scene does provide an interesting and illuminating shift in perspective. She thinks her home-modified gown looks shabby genteel. He thinks she makes every other woman look overdressed. I wish more authors would use this kind of strategy.

Then it’s off to the country, where Fitz and his family take Charity under their wing, providing her with a riding horse and generally being good friends to her. I really felt sorry for Fitz at this point. It’s obvious that he rather likes Charity, but she can think only of the children. Oh, and the obnoxious Lord Alistair, of course, whose only good quality seems to be that he’s a snappy dresser. Why is it that otherwise sensible heroines fall helplessly in love with heroes who have never shown them the slightest kindness, when the perfectly nice sidekick doesn’t get a look in? It’s a mystery to me.

Inevitably, Charity ends up moving into Ashbourne Grange to look after the children, and clashing with Alistair who comes to check up on them (but only after being prompted by Fitz). Whereupon he decides to stay for a while, which had me clutching my pearls, I can tell you. Have these people never heard of chaperons? In what version of the Regency is it OK for a single man and and a single woman, unrelated, to stay under the same roof, with only the servants?

However, this spell together is where he begins (belatedly) to appreciate Charity’s good points, and she begins to realise he’s not quite as curmudgeonly as his father. But of course, we couldn’t possibly have a simple slide towards our happy ever after, so there has to be a sting in the tail, a reversion to curmudgeonliness for Alistair and a little bit of melodrama before we get there.

I confess, I really didn’t like Alistair very much for most of this book, but given the character of his father, perhaps some of his behaviour is understandable, and I have to admit he’s a very common type for the era in which this book was written. And the ending was rather sweet. This was so well-written that I’m going to be generous and go for four stars.

Review: Remember Love by Mary Balogh (2022)

A warning: this is going to be slightly spoilery, because it’s impossible to analyse the book properly without getting into the nitty-gritty, so if you really don’t want to know anything, don’t read on.

I really don’t know what to make of this. My first reaction is that it’s a shambles – too long spent on the preliminaries, then a huge explosion, an inexplicable flounce and then some over-angsty tidying up. It’s unbalanced, with too much time wasted on description and not enough on character development. But on the plus side – well, it’s Mary Balogh.

Here’s the premise: Devlin Ware, Viscount Mountford, is twenty-two, and the eldest son and heir to the Earl of Stratton. Their home, Ravenwood, is portrayed as some kind of paradise on earth, and the beautiful and loving Ware family as paragons of virtue and duty, bent on giving everyone, high or low, a rattling good time at fetes and balls and feasts throughout the year. Naturally they do all the work and organising themselves. Fully a third of the book, believe it or not, is devoted to painting a cloying, not to say nauseating, picture of the beautiful Ware family and their idyllic life with all the rosy-cheeked and loyal locals (who are all named, by the way, as if we need to know all this stuff). It is an info-dump of astronomic proportions.

The info-dump culminates in a grand fete and ball, at which Devlin and all his family run round selflessly ensuring the locals are all enjoying themselves, while the locals make appreciative noises and hold log-splitting contests and dance round the maypole (in July? Well, whatever). At the ball, Devlin dances with the eighteen year old daughter of neighbours, Gwyneth Rhys, and dances her right out into the garden where they discover that they have been in love with each other for years, he proposes, she accepts, they kiss, and isn’t all this just so sweet?

And then a thing occurs, and this is where it gets spoilery. Devlin and Gwyneth come across another couple hoping for a spot of privacy in the garden, and perhaps something more than a kiss. Unfortunately, it’s Devlin’s father and the mysterious widow who’s recently moved to the village, and they seem to know each other rather well. Oh noes! She must be his mistress, yet the earl has brought her here as a guest into his home, under the nose of his countess. Now, the Regency (in fact the whole Georgian era, and the Victorian too) was quite relaxed about a married man having a mistress, but the cardinal rule is you don’t bring her anywhere near your wife.

Devlin is incandescent with rage at this insult to his mother and his sisters, and creates a huge and very melodramatic scene. I imagine the author intended this sudden explosion as a contrast with the peaceful scenes that preceded it, and it actually does that very well, like a sudden thunderstorm at the end of a perfect summer day. But the effect is not what Devlin expected – his family turn on him, and he is banished.

Now this is the point where the book goes off the rails for me. His mother wants him gone, for whatever reason, so go he must, but there is a whole world out there he could have gone to. What he does is, frankly, inexplicable to me – he signs up to join the army and go off to fight Napoleon. I can only suppose that he had some kind of death wish, but it’s never really explained. When he goes to say farewell to Gwyneth, she rails at him that they could have gone to her relatives in Wales, they could still have married, so why does he have to join the army, and it’s a very good question. I suppose the main reason is: because the plot demanded it.

Devlin survives the war, albeit with an interesting scar. His half-brother, Ben, who had chosen to go with him, also survives. Another brother, Nicholas, who had planned to enter the army himself, also goes off to fight (why? Two brothers from one family in the war is just madness), but he also survives. And the Earl of Stratton dies and Devlin is forced to return home and pick up the threads of his old life as best he can. Except that everything has changed. He has changed, but everyone else in the family has changed too. There are no more fetes and open days. There is no happy family, selflessly arranging entertainments for the locals (they’re doing their own arranging). Everyone is miserable.

Gwyneth, meanwhile, is still unmarried (well, we never saw that coming, did we?). She tells herself she’s over Devlin and is ready to marry the nice Welshman who’s passionate about music and seems to be passionate about her, too. But then Devlin reappears and all bets are off. I’m going to be honest here, and say that the rest of the book runs on fairly predictable rails. Devlin takes up the reins of the estate, rebuilds bridges with his family, develops a new relationship with the locals and ends up marrying Gwyneth after all, and absolutely none of it is surprising, with one exception. Gwyneth turns out to be the saving grace of this book, because Devlin is a wet blanket almost to the end. And then we get the schmaltzy wedding day, which is twelve teaspoons of sugar sweet, so you have been warned. There is one fairly soft-focus sex scene, which made no sense to me at all, but I suppose a Balogh book without any sex would be too much of a novelty.

I love Mary Balogh to pieces, and even though I was saying ‘Wait, what?’ at frequent intervals and nothing happened for far too long and Devlin was a drip, she still hit me right in the feels time after time. But this just doesn’t feel like the Regency, to me. That whole first third of the book, with the frankly over the top generosity of the Wares, rang false with me. The very idea that they would open the park to anyone who wanted to enjoy it is (for me) incredible, and far too modern an idea. The whole point of large estates was to keep the riff-raff out so that the toffs never had to encounter them. They might conceivably hold an open day once a year, but even that feels more Victorian than Regency to me.

And then the oddities, like face painting for the children – really?? And a baby carrier. These things are not impossible to imagine happening in the Regency, but to my mind, they sound too modern. Gwyneth rides astride sometimes, a huge no-no. Then there’s the baby fat that gives younger daughter Stephanie such grief. Look, fat was absolutely not a problem in the Regency. Right up to the 1920s, when the health craze kicked in, being plump or downright fat was a sign of wealth. Conspicuous consumption was a real thing, and only poor people were thin (or anyone with actual consumption – TB – so being thin was regarded as dangerously unhealthy for anyone who could afford to eat well). Then there are feeders for the wild birds. Well, that’s possible, I suppose, but Regency people kept exotic birds like parrots or songbirds in cages. Wild birds were either for eating or for scientific study (by stuffing or dissecting) or not interesting. Also, the author obviously doesn’t realise that a university education in the Regency was nothing like the modern version. Far from needing to work hard for exams, the sons of the nobility had no need to take any exams, or even to turn up to lectures. They paid, they got a degree.

On the whole, this book was a disappointment. It’s beautifully written, because of course it is, it’s Mary Balogh, for heaven’s sake. But the pacing was all wrong, and the central conceit felt contrived. If I were writing it, I’d have been tempted to start with the fatal fete, condensing all the dull info-dump into little vignettes. Or it could have started with Devlin returning home as earl, showing the earlier events in flashback. Either would, in my opinion, have worked better than the long, long opening chapters.

I also didn’t find any of the characters terribly interesting (apart from Ben, and maybe Stephanie), and it was just too darned sweet for my palate. I like a little tartness in my Regencies, and I also like to be surprised, and that just didn’t happen. And having grumbled at ridiculous length about this book, I confess I read it avidly the whole way through, if only to see the big explosion and find out how things worked out for Devlin’s family. This is the first of the series, so maybe the rest, unburdened by the scene-setting of the opener, will be more interesting. Three stars.

Review: Intertwine by Nichole Van (2014)

This is one of those books where it’s best to just go with the flow and not question the logistics too much. As such, it’s a pleasant and undemanding time-slip romance from modern to Regency. I would have liked a bit more rigour, but then I’m probably not the ideal audience for this book.

Here’s the premise: in 2012, Emme Wilde is in love with the man she knows only as an old-timey picture in a locket, and real life, melodramatic as it sometimes is, just can’t compare. Determined to find the truth behind the locket, she travels to England to stay in an old cottage near to where the man in the picture must have lived, traced through the painter of the picture. So there she is in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a humungous storm, when the lights go out (because of course they do!). So does she go down to the basement? Of course she does, but she fortuitously happens to be wearing a full length nightgown and wrap, and just happens to be carrying her handbag (purse), because of course she is. She’s going to need that when — Crack! Oh, there she goes, back to 1812, where James Knight is (coincidentally) riding home in a (coincidentally) humungous storm when he catches a glimpse of white at the base of the old oak tree.

Now it took a while to get to this point, and I get that authors like to set the scene in both settings of a time-slip, but for me as a reader, when I know beyond all doubt that something major is going to happen, I appreciate it if the author gets on with it. A lot of the background to Emme’s life seemed (initially, anyway) not terribly relevant. Some of it (like why she’s carrying her handbag, and all the useful things in it) becomes pertinent later, but the whole disaster-prone build up seemed over the top, to me. And the funny part of it is that all the improbable events actually happened to the author’s parents, which only goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction (and that even true stories can be too unlikely to use in a work of fiction).

In order to delay the oh-no-I’ve-gone-back-in-time moment, Emme is rendered unconscious by the storm, and even when she wakes, she’s suffering from amnesia. This is a very popular trope, and I completely understand why, but I still heartily dislike it, mainly because it’s usually a magic MacGuffin, a device to sidestep an issue or create an artificial obstacle, and invariably the person recovers completely afterwards. It’s a plot device, basically.

In this case, the author cheats a bit, and this grated on me the whole time Emme was amnesiac. Firstly, even though Emme knows nothing about herself, not even her name, she’s referred to by name the whole time. It’s ‘Emme woke’ or ‘Emme said’, and the purist in me wondered why, when we’re in her point of view, she doesn’t think of herself as ‘the girl’ or something equally blank. This is a case where using first person (‘I woke’ and ‘I said’) would have worked much better.

And secondly, although her mind is supposedly blank, there’s an Alter-Emme voice in her head making snarky and very 21st century comments. Now, this is actually very funny, and the culture clash is one of the strengths of the book, but it does dilute the Regency elements somewhat to have this very modern chatter in the background. It makes it seem like a contemporary romance, actually, and as such it works pretty well.

The romance is rather good, with the two protagonists gradually sliding into it, but all the time aware that they have no idea who Emme (the girl!) is, or whether she’s even a respectable person, or married, or on the run after some heinous crime. It’s a very plausible obstacle. I did wonder how it was that Emme, with her American accent and modern speech, managed to convince these upper class people that she was as much gentry as them, but this is waved away with a quick line about her copying their accent. Probably with time travel stories, it doesn’t do to agonise too much over the logistics! My bad.

Eventually, Emme is reunited with her handbag (purse), and this is another quirk, in that James consistently calls it a purse, rather than simply a bag. Ladies didn’t have handbags (purses) in those days, they carried a small cloth bag called a reticule. But that’s just me over-thinking things again. The purse reunites Emme with her 21st century memories, and leads to the funniest section of the book, where she introduces James to modern tech (doesn’t that cause a tear in the space-time continuum or something?).

From then onwards, it’s a gallop to the happy ending (at 88% on my Kindle; there’s a whole heap of stuff after the end), by way of a tornado (in England? But by this time I was in ‘whatever’ mode). You’ll have to read the book yourself to see how they reconcile the whole 2012/1812 problem, and how they deal with the rest of the family. It’s a lot of fun, if you can switch off the analytical part of your brain. Sadly, I couldn’t, and the book just wasn’t Regency enough for me, but for anyone less picky than me, this is a fun, lightweight read, and the start of a whole series. Three stars.

Review: The Wicked Cousin by Stella Riley (2017)

How can a Stella Riley book be so indigestible? I loved the previous three books in the series, and this has its moments, but it’s totally bogged down by the weight of characters from previous books, who are just not adequately explained. I don’t object to the reappearance of one or two, if they’re relevant to the plot, but please, please, please introduce them AS IF they’re new characters. And there are so many of them…

Here’s the premise: Sebastian Audley has spent the last few years lighting up the scandal-sheets with his outrageous exploits. We know right from the start why: his twin died in childhood and, as the sole remaining heir, Sebastian was wrapped in cotton wool and thoroughly coddled, to the point where he had no life at all. The result was that, as soon as he came of age, he slipped his shackles and took off to indulge in all the wild exploits he’d been forbidden before. But after a few years, and with his father in ill-health, Sebastian returns to England, minded to settle down. Trouble is, a reputation like his is hard to live down, and while the gentlemen try their very best to provoke him to into his old ways, the ladies set out single-mindedly to entrap him in other ways. It all gets rather tedious for him.

Cassandra Delahaye is far too sensible to be interested in a rake and ne’er-do-well like Sebastian. So obviously, they’re going to fall in love, right? Well, of course they are, and since he’s the heir to a title and a very pretty fortune, and she’s of impeccable lineage and reputation… wait a minute. What exactly is the obstacle to their courtship and marriage? There isn’t one, of course, but no self-respecting Regency romance can let that pass. There has to be an obstacle. Cue the thwarted and vindictive ex-mistress.

If you groaned at this point, believe me, so did I. Stella Riley is an awesome writer, and the first book in this series was breathtakingly original (a blind heroine! How wonderful is that?), so it’s incredibly disappointing to find this story propped up by such a tired old trope. And because it’s such an unworkable trope, the ex-mistress inevitably becomes more and more unhinged, leading to some ridiculous situations. Yes, it was very dramatic, but no, not in the least plausible.

The previous books in this series were terrific, so I’m going to set this down as a misstep that simply didn’t work for me. The writing is excellent, as ever, the romantic moments were lovely and if you have a better memory than me, or you read the books in rapid succession, then maybe the deluge of characters from previous books will enhance your enjoyment of this book. But for me, Riley’s brilliance notwithstanding, the over-the-top ex-mistress and the hard-to-follow ensemble cast keeps this to three stars for me.

Review: Penelope and the Wicked Duke by Sofi Laporte (2021)

A real curate’s egg of a book, that starts off brilliantly, sags into implausibility in the middle and then goes off the rails altogether at the end. There’s a charming and very enjoyable romance lurking tantalisingly just out of reach here, but despite the oddball stuff, there’s a lot to like about it.

Here’s the premise: Penelope Reid (or Pen) has been waiting for years for her guardian to arrive and reclaim her from Miss Hilversham’s Seminary for Young Ladies, where he dumped her some years ago and then vanished. Tired of waiting, she escapes into the night, dressed in men’s clothes, and makes her way to London to find him. He’s not at the address where she expected to find him, so she takes cheap lodgings nearby and sets out to dream up a plan B. By chance, she bumps into (very literally) a passing viscount, Lord Alworth, whose close encounter with Pen suggests to him that she’s only masquerading as a boy. He’s so intrigued, he sets out to follow her and find out what she’s up to. She gives him the brush-off, but then he meets her again trying to get into White’s, the famous gentlemen’s club, in the hope of tracking down her guardian. Still intrigued, he not only takes her inside, he arranges membership for her.

So far, so howlingly implausible, but then realism isn’t exactly what this series is about. The basic premise is that the four heroines all made a wish at a wishing well, and one of them made the wish that all four should marry dukes. Three of them have now done so, and Pen is the fourth. She was so uninterested in marrying a duke that she dived into the well to retrieve the coin. She’s been in love with her guardian, the elusive Marcus Smith, ever since he saved her life in India and brought her back to Britain. He’s the only one she wants to marry, and he’s not a duke. So there’s a magical/fairytale theme running through the whole series, which makes it hard to quibble over any lack of realism or astonishing turns of fortune. That’s just the framework the author has constructed.

This part of the book is terrific. Alworth is a lovely hero, the typical jaded man-about-town, a dandy and dilettante, whose interest is piqued by Pen and her story. He sets himself to help her find her guardian, and before too long he learns the truth – that the enigmatic Marcus Smith is actually the wicked Duke of Rochford. Pen isn’t deterred, so the hunt is on to track down the duke and confront him. The verbal sparring between Alworth and Pen is brilliant, and very funny. At one point I actually laughed till I cried.

Meanwhile, Pen is getting into trouble at every verse end, including insulting someone and being challenged to a duel (and rescued by Alworth), and then being challenged again (and rescued by an Indian friend). In fact, Pen gets into so much trouble, and refuses to confide in Alworth, or trust him, that frankly I wondered just why he stuck around. Pen deserved to be left to stew in her own stupidity.

This middle section is very strange, because Pen does eventually tell Alworth some of her story, and he does make it clear that he knows she’s female, but they go on pretending that she’s a bloke, and I wasn’t at all clear whether Pen had any grip on reality or was just so wrapped up in her own little world that nothing else mattered. Anyway, this is where I began to lose patience somewhat.

And then there were glimmerings of Alworth stepping in, not merely to help Pen along, but to address the tricky problem that he’s fallen in love with Pen, who is *still* pretending she’s a bloke. So when a mysterious sponsor sets Pen up with a chaperon and some posh frocks to do the season, I hoped that she was going to see the light and make the sensible decision. You know, the really, really tricky choice between the guardian who dumped her in school years ago and never went back, and is *still* ignoring her, or the nice, charming, handsome, rich, honourable man who’s been helping her every step of the way.

But, no. Everything comes to a head at a big society ball, and really, that should have been it, make your choice, happy ending ahoy, but I guess that wasn’t enough drama, because there’s a whole bunch more Pen stupidity before she finally sees the light. Argh!

I get what the author was trying to do here, and perhaps for some people Pen’s clinging desperately to the fiction of her caring guardian makes it easy to accept her difficulty in knowing what she wants, but for me it just didn’t work. Pen was not likeable enough for me to have much sympathy for her. She was just a destructive whirlwind, hurling herself into all sorts of situations without a thought, and dragging other people into her messes. And her guardian was just too horrible for words (even at the ball! What was he thinking??!!). So ultimately, although I loved Alworth and the early part of the book was sublimely funny and refreshingly different, in the end it veered too far from realism for my comfort. Three stars.

Review: Ginnie Come Lately by Carola Dunn (1993)

Well. What to make of this? I’ve had good luck with Carola Dunn’s other books, and I’ve read quite a few, but this one just didn’t work for me, and it’s all the hero’s fault.

Here’s the premise: Justin, Lord Amis, heir to an earldom, has spent two years as a diplomat tootling round Europe in the train of various government officials in the aftermath of Waterloo and the outbreak of peace. He returns home, hoping to pick up the threads of his understanding with Lady Amabel Fellowes. Has she waited for him all this time? She has! But at their first meeting, she gives him some information that puts all thoughts of his own marriage out of his mind. His elderly father, who has been living as a recluse ever since his wife died, has remarried a widow with nine children. Justin must rush home to Wooburn Court to find out what is going on.

He’s only just reached the grounds of the ancestral home when he spies a woman with a group of children. Aha! His new stepmother and some of his step-siblings. He promptly falls off his horse (why? Is he such an incompetent rider?), and then proceeds to hurl abuse at the woman before riding off again. It’s worth quoting his exact words, and remembering that this is a viscount and a grown man, not a child, addressing the woman he believes is his new stepmother, whom he has never met before.

‘He looked her up and down in a shockingly insolent manner, from the shabby chip-straw bonnet hiding her golden ringlets to the half-boots of worn jean. Sneering, he said, “So you are the gull-catcher. Mutton dressed as lamb! You need not expect to profit by your chicanery, strumpet. By all the devils in hell, I’ll see you damned first!”’

This may work perfectly well for a villain, but a hero? No. There’s a very funny scene where the woman so addressed tries to account for the odd terminology used (“Why did he call you a trumpet, Ginnie?”). Of course, this is not stepmama at all, but the eldest of the children, who is 20, and definitely not a strumpet (and neither is her mother).

Then comes the scene which really set my teeth on edge. Justin comes down for dinner and finds Ginnie alone, and after a brief exchange of hostile fire, grabs her and kisses her. And she, stupid woman, instead of slapping his smug face, allows him to do it and then pretends nothing happened.

From here on, it’s outright war. Justin is determined to best the Webster children, and they set out with a will to make his life as miserable as possible. Hot water goes missing, starched cravats are discovered limp, there are nettles in the bed, burrs in his boots and a hedgehog amongst his clothes. Meanwhile, it gradually dawns on him that his father, who had been dwindling into a sad old age, is lively and besotted and terribly happy. And as he gets to know the Webster children better, he realises they’re actually fine people (apart from the mischievous twins). All his accusations against them, of spending his father’s money extravagantly, for instance, are completely untrue.

At this point, there might still have been a redemptive arc for him, if he’d simply admitted he was wrong and made his peace with them. But he never quite comes clean, he’s still behaving inappropriately with Ginnie, and he’s invited all his most toffee-nosed friends from London, including his intended, to a house party. The original idea was to put the Websters properly in their place, and if he’d simply confessed all to Ginnie (who runs the household single handed, because of course she does), I’d have liked him a lot better. But he lets things run, there’s confusion and some perfectly natural jealousy from Ginnie, and when his friends are rude about the Websters, just as he was initially, he says nothing, when really he should have said, “Yes, I thought that at first, too, but they’re really nice when you get to know them better”. Stupid Justin.

And then he makes his biggest and stupidest mistake. Having decided that he really doesn’t want to marry Lady Amabel, who is a cow of the first order, he gets hot and heavy with Ginnie but before breaking it off with Lady Amabel. Cue awkward scene.

I can imagine that this sounded really good in the synopsis the author presented to her publisher. Arrogant hero is a bumptious fool, but is taught a valuable lesson by the virtuous Ginnie and her charming (if amusingly mischievous) siblings. The trouble is, to justify the necessary hostility between the factions, Justin has to step way, way beyond the bounds even of common decency, let alone the standards of honour expected of a Regency gentleman. What kind of a man calls his father’s new wife a strumpet to her face? What kind of man forces a kiss on a girl under the protection of his father? What kind of man allows his friends to insult his family? What kind of a man tells a woman who’s waited years for him that he’s not going to marry her after all (even if she is a cow)? It’s appalling behaviour, and I just can’t forgive him.

Obviously, not everyone will see it that way, and if you can manage to read it without any pearl-clutching, you must have a stronger constitution than I do, certainly, but there’s a pleasant and even, dare I say it, a charming little story hidden away behind all the snarling. It’s short, anyway, and even if I dislike the hero intensely, I have no fault to find with the writing. Two stars.