Astonishingly, this was suggested to me by the Goodreads recommendations algorithm, possibly the first time in history that an algorithm has ever nudged me towards a book that I actually enjoyed. It’s pretty silly, in a lot of ways, but it was so much fun that I won’t hold that against it.Here’s the premise: Miranda Carmichael is companion to eccentric Lady Wiston. Now eccentric characters abound in Regencies of a certain kind, but Lady Wiston is *seriously* eccentric – her philanthropic efforts involve viewing prisons and lunatic asylums, and rescuing all sorts of working class people in need of a helping hand. Some of them are recruited to staff her house, some just come for tea and one is teaching her yoga. Miranda takes all that in her stride. But when Lady Wiston’s down-at-heel nephew, Peter Daviot, arrives to write a book of his adventures in British Canada, Miranda finds herself rather torn. He’s very charming and amusing and so forth, but she can’t help disapproving of him, too.
And then another nephew, Lord Snell, puts in an appearance and the plot really builds a head of steam. I won’t say too much about that, because it would spoil things to give away too much, but suffice to say there is plenty of the advertised mayhem of the title, resolved by some very resourceful doings by all the main characters and some of the more colourful secondary characters, too.
I liked both sides of our romantic couple here. It’s clear almost from the start that these two are made for each other, but they don’t hurtle into things, thank goodness, building a solid and very believable friendship first, until the dastardly villain drives them apart (and again, the obstacle was very believable and entirely consistent with Regency mores). Although they could, perhaps, have simply sat down and talked things over, it would have been very much outside the bounds of propriety to do so, so I had no problem with that. And frankly, jealous Peter, misunderstanding everything, was gloriously funny, as were Lady Wiston and her motley collection of wacky misfits.
In the end, it’s Lady Wiston who steps to help our hapless pair of lovers, just as she does for all her rescued ne’er-do-wells, and a more creative and delicious enabling of the romantic denouement would be hard to find. Funny and exciting and charming all at once – I can’t give this less than five stars.