Review: The Seventh Suitor by Laura Matthews (1979)

Posted June 1, 2025 by Mary Kingswood in Review / 0 Comments

An odd little book, a bit lacking in the romance department and with far too many not particularly interesting characters milling about at the side of the stage, but very readable.

Here’s the premise: Kate Montgomery is settling back into domestic country life after several far more exciting years travelling with her widowed aunt. Her younger sister is about to make her debut in London, but Kate’s past the age of looking for a husband. But one day she receives an astonishing five proposals, one after the other. I’m going to take issue with this right from the start. Usually I can grant a book its opening premise, but not here. The idea is that this is an amusing prank organised by her dippy brother amongst her friends, but frankly, a proposal of marriage in the Regency wasn’t something to be taken lightly. If Kate had said yes to one of them, he would have been honour bound to marry her. Saying it was just a joke won’t cut it. So that’s a pretty silly start.

From then onwards, the story branches out into a multitude of side stories, some of which work better than others, but frankly the book would have been much stronger if it had dispensed with most of those and shed more of a spotlight on the two principals, Kate and her haughty aristocratic neighbour, the Earl of Winterton. He’s a starchy sort of man, although arrogant seems like a better word for it, but with Kate, he’s downright rude. But that’s alright, because she’s rude right back at him.

There’s an interesting reason for the antagonism. Some years ago, Winterton’s brother Carl wanted to marry Kate but she turned him down. He went off to fight in the war, but when he died he left her a substantial legacy (twenty thousand pounds, a tidy sum). Winterton disapproved of Kate accepting it. So did a number of other people, since it really wasn’t done to leave a fortune to a woman who wasn’t a relation of any sort, but Winterton took his disapproval to extremes. So now they snipe at each other constantly, and even though the reader knows that these two are going to get together, it’s hard to see how. It’s well past the 50% point before he notices how pretty she is.

The author rather cleverly chips away at his haughtiness by putting him in humiliating situations, and as they’re repeatedly thrown together they do begin to develop some respect for each other. When they all transfer to town for the season, he actually starts rather tentatively to court Kate, before one of the pesky side plots drags her away. And then it’s just a downhill run to the declarations of love.

I said the book is lacking, romantically, and frankly it’s so limply unemotional that it never actually builds up a head of steam. I make due allowances for its age (1979!) but even for a traditional read it’s pretty tepid stuff. I also disliked the amount of banal dialogue the author saw fit to inflict on the reader. We really don’t need all the greetings and how-are-yous and how was your journey and a recap of all the recent plot developments. It’s tedious.

This sounds pretty critical, but actually it rolled along pretty well, and I was absorbed in it from start to finish. It’s a little too bland for five stars, but it’s a good four stars for me.

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Review: Gwendolyn Grows Up by G L Robinson (2025)

Posted June 1, 2025 by Mary Kingswood in Review / 0 Comments

An odd little book, which I found hard to believe was published only this year. It has the feel of something much more traditional, but is very much one of a kind. To be honest, I’m not at all sure what to make of it.

Here’s the premise: Gwendolyn Stanhope has been left destitute by the death of her parents and the unwillingness of her only relations to accept responsibility for her. She’s forced to seek employment, first as a governess, even though she readily admits she knows very little and can’t teach, and when her ineptitude is exposed, she becomes a companion to an elderly lady in London, Lady Wendover. Here she starts to learn about Life through Lady W’s insatiable interest in the gossip columns and the newspapers generally, she learns to read to expand her knowledge and not just for amusement and she falls in love with Lady W’s son, Graham, the Earl of Kendal, a starchy sort of character with an unquenchable affection for his mother.

Graham is sort of, almost-but-not-quite betrothed to the very stuffy Dinah Framingham, who instantly sees that Gwendolyn is her rival and sets out to put paid to the upstart hussy. From this stem all the convoluted plot twists of the story, where Gwendolyn is obliged to abandon the civilised world of Lady W and her son, and make shift in a much less comfortable world. But her indomitable spirit and positive attitude to life carry her through and improve the lives of everyone she interacts with.

There’s a fairytale feel to the story that I wasn’t totally comfortable with. Most of it is simply told, and I confess, I do like to feel a character’s emotions a little more intimately than this. It’s part of the reason why this feels like a much more old-fashioned book. Fortunately, Graham’s dogged search for Gwendolyn after she disappears from Lady W’s house gives the reader a clear insight into his increasingly desperate emotions, and I enjoyed (if that’s the right word) this part of the book enormously. By enjoyed, I mean I was increasingly stressed out myself with G’s continued disappearance.

The reunion was everything an invested reader would hope for. By the time Graham catches up with Gwendolyn, she’s working for a houseful of mannishly-dressed females who drink, smoke and sit around endlessly discussing the weaknesses of males and how females are far superior. This leads to the best moment in the book. When Graham turns up and proposes to Gwendolyn on the spot, the mannish women (in unison) cry: “Don’t do it! It’s slavery!” (She does, of course, because lurve…)

This was so entertaining, and so refreshingly different, that it would normally be a five star read. So why only four stars? Because Graham, the Earl of Kendal, is consistently called Lord Wendover instead of Lord Kendal, and his mother is Lady Wendover. He even has calling cards in the name Graham Wendover (peers never use their family name, ever). I’d let this pass in a pre-internet book, but in this day and age, when this information is readily available, there’s absolutely no excuse for getting it wrong. The other oddity is the number of female servants who somehow manage to marry and yet carry on working. That just wasn’t a thing in the Regency. Male servants of sufficient seniority might marry and continue in service but never female ones.

An unusual and light-hearted read with quite a lot of actual history in it, and some charming characters. The principal trio of Gwendolyn, Graham and Lady Wendover are all lovely. Recommended for something a bit different. Four stars.

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Review: London Rose by Rosanne Lortz (2023)

Posted June 1, 2025 by Mary Kingswood in Review / 0 Comments

The one word which summarises this book is charm. It’s a delightful, gentle read, which the author describes as an homage to Georgette Heyer and it really does work pretty well, so for anyone yearning to find a new Heyer, while there’ll never be anyone quite like her, this book is a very acceptable substitute.

Here’s the premise: Mrs Audeley is a widow living a quiet, lower gentry life in Derbyshire with her son Gyles, who is obsessed with roses. She’d rather like to visit London again some time for a little recreation, but Gyles isn’t interested. But one day, a girl appears and tells Mrs Audeley that she’s running away from her tyrannical guardian. Mrs Audeley is quite happy to go along with this idea, pushing her out into the garden to be looked after by Gyles, for who knows what may come of that? But when the tyrannical guardian appears, he’s not a monstrous, wicked sort of man, but the rather handsome and well-mannered Earl of Kendall. And in no time he has persuaded Mrs Audeley and Gyles to accompany his niece Penelope and himself to London to help bring her out. Which fits Mrs Audeley’s plans very well.

And so to London they go, where various things happen, both good and bad, but that isn’t really the point of the book. It’s the gently managing manner of Lord Kendall and the pragmatic and easy-going ways of Mrs Audeley and their wonderful conversations that make the book. I love these two, and the fact that they’re both the shady side of forty makes their romance all the more wonderful.

A perfect Regency read, and I can’t tell you how thrilled I was that Mrs Audeley was (very correctly) called that almost throughout the entire book, and Lord Kendall had to ask what her Christian name is when he proposes. Five stars, but I’d have given it more if I could.

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Review: A Duel For Christmas by Rosanne E Lortz (2018)

Posted May 5, 2025 by Mary Kingswood in Review / 0 Comments

The third in the Pevensey series, and another corker. The author is exceptionally skilled at drawing characters with deep family secrets, and at classic murder mysteries; this book (indeed, the whole series) is a stunning combination of both.

Here’s the premise: the Aldine family has gathered in London at Christmas for an unexpected celebration – the heir to the viscountcy, Will, just twenty-one, is betrothed to the lovely and besotted sister of the Duke of Tilbury, Lady Helena Angiers. Will’s older sister, Maud, is as surprised as anyone that flighty Will is prepared to settle down at such an early age, and Helena’s brother, the duke, is clearly not pleased about it. But Maud has her own problems. She’s a widow, only recently escaped from the depths of Devon, but past events threaten her future, and finding an unwelcome attraction springing up between herself and the duke only complicates matters. And then there’s a sudden death and things get *really* complicated.

The whole book plays out over the twelve days of Christmas, and the return of the eccentric Bow Street Runner, Jacob Pevensey, livens up the second half. Pevensey comes more to life with each book, and now that he’s apparently joined forces with the Cecil brother and sister, one can only hope for a long series to watch further developments.

This book is somewhat unusual in featuring a heroine several years older than the hero. It’s loosely based on real events in the middle ages, and frankly it seems to work pretty well. Maud’s reservations about Geoffrey’s youth are perfectly understandable, but given that he had inherited his title at an early age and was used to being in charge, his maturity was plausible. Although perhaps his propensity for duels might argue against it!

The murder was wrapped up rather neatly, the romance likewise and my only grumble was that the unworthy cousin got to inherit in the end. I was so badly hoping that there had been a secret wedding and a potential heir to cut him out of the inheritance! But the author stuck closely to the historical precedents and I can’t fault her for that. There are a smattering of Americanisms (bussing, passed, gotten and the like) but nothing that particularly bothered me. On the whole, the author’s portrayal of the Regency is very convincing, and I look forward to the fourth book in the series with great anticipation. Five stars.

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Review: The Duke’s Last Hunt by Rosanne E Lortz (2016)

Posted May 5, 2025 by Mary Kingswood in Review / 0 Comments

After the surprise of the first book, this one came somewhat less out of left field, but it was just as enjoyable. The whole series is inspired by real events in English history, but don’t let that put you off, since the writing is firmly rooted in the Regency.

Here’s the premise: shy Elizabeth (Eliza) Malcolm is the unlikely recipient of marital attentions from Rufus, the Duke of Brockenhurst. Her impoverished gentry parents jump at the chance for such an illustrious match, and are delighted to be invited to the family estate, where the duke plans one of his deer hunts in the forest surrounding the house, and will, they suppose, propose. But the duke and his mother are not the only people present. The duke’s brash sister is conducting a fairly public courtship, his older half-brother is looking for more financial help, and then there’s his younger brother, the intriguing Henry Rowland, who is estranged from his brother and delights in making mischief between him and his intended. And so poor Eliza find herself in the house party from hell, with all sorts of undercurrents rippling beneath the surface, a future husband who takes very little notice of her but is uncomfortably proprietorial and his brother, who seems to be the worst kind of scoundrel, but is surprisingly gentle and thoughtful towards her.

And then there’s a sudden death. Knowing something of the historical events on which this story is (loosely) based, I was expecting it, but after that, when eccentric Bow Street Runner turns up to investigate whether this is, as it appears to be, a hunting accident or whether something more sinister is afoot, things become delightfully complex and tangled. I have to confess that the author is a master at unravelling the mystery, clue by careful clue. I loved the way it was revealed, and that everything made perfect sense.

The romance wraps up rather neatly and very plausibly. In book 1, it was the hero who found the strength to push back, but here it’s the heroine who ‘finds her voice’, as the hero puts it, and snatches her own chance of happiness. I love a heroine who displays some gumption. Another wonderful tale. Five stars. And now on to book 3.

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Review: To Wed An Heiress by Rosanne E Lortz (2015)

Posted May 5, 2025 by Mary Kingswood in Review / 0 Comments

One of the joys of reading a book for the first time is not knowing precisely what lurks within its pages. Sometimes, in fact most times, if I am being honest, the plot unrolls smoothly and predictably, and that’s fine, too, but sometimes – oh, a glorious few times! – it veers off into unexpected territory. And so it is here.

Here’s the premise: Harold (or Haro) Emison has, at the tender age of twenty-three, come into his inheritance as Earl of Anglesford, only to find that the coffers are empty. The options are to sell the ancient family home or… what? His younger brother Torin proposes the time-honoured solution – marry an heiress. And within days, Haro has set about doing just that, betrothing himself to the elegant person of Arabella Hastings, only daughter of cotton mill owner William Hastings. There’s only one snag: Haro was on the brink of an engagement to his distant cousin who lives with the family, Eda Swanycke, who takes the new engagement in very bad part. When the Emison family and the Hastings decamp to the ancestral home, the atmosphere is somewhat soured by the subtle sniping between the two women.

Now, at this point, it was perfectly possible that this would turn into a variant of Georgette Heyer’s A Civil Contract, as Haro and Arabella got to know each other better and reached an accommodation. So, just another marriage of convenience story, then. But this is not that story, happily, as relations between Eda and Arabella turn to open warfare, a French architect turns up set about remodelling the ancestral home into a modern Palladian masterpiece, and Haro finds himself caught in the middle, trying desperately to keep the peace in order to save his family from ruin.

And then there’s a murder. Oh. I wasn’t expecting *that*. The book now veers off sharply into murder mystery territory, complete with the eccentric detective (a Bow Street Runner, in this case), one Jacob Pevensey, whose eccentricity consists of sketching the suspects instead of taking notes. This part of the book is note perfect, the events leading up to the murder being gradually revealed, and a last-minute revelation which makes everything clear to Mr Pevensey (although I’d spotted a key point earlier). And then the romance is wrapped up, along with another reveal which wasn’t too hard to predict, either.

I see from the reviews that a lot of people disliked the two part plot, some feeling the romance was unsatisfactory, and some the murder mystery. For me, I loved the whole book, and especially that it was (to me, anyway) totally unpredictable, and I just love a book that takes me by surprise. Highlights include the sparring between the two rivals for Haro’s affections, and I liked the slow but relentless uncovering of Arabella’s unpleasant nature. I liked, too, that Haro finally realised what he needed to do to be true to himself. Some reviewers thought he was too much of a doormat early on, but I really admired the way he tried his hardest to keep everyone happy and only gave it up when he realised that it was never going to work. A terrific read. Five stars and I’m straight off to the next book in the series.

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Review: Lord Glenraven’s Return by Anne Barbour (1994)

Posted May 5, 2025 by Mary Kingswood in Review / 0 Comments

A lovely and quite unusual story of a young widow fighting to keep her independence. Modern Regencies that feature a spirited and feisty heroine who doesn’t need a man to run her life, thank you very much, are two a penny, but this one is definitely out of the usual mould.

Here’s the premise: Mrs Claudia Carstairs is a widow struggling to make ends meet on the estate left to her by her abusive husband. There are a few sheep, and she’s trying to build a horse-breeding business, doing as much of the stable work as the hands. But one day a stranger appears in the village, asking questions about Ravencroft, and a couple of days later he turns up and asks for a job. He’s willing to work in the stables, but he’s also able to act as butler, an odd combination. But he’ll work for board and a bed, and she’s desperate, so she takes him on, and it isn’t long before one of the grooms recognises him as Lord Glenraven, whose father used to own the estate. Jem confesses that it was stolen by Carstairs and he’s come to reclaim it, but he needs proof which is hidden somewhere in the house. He swears the groom to secrecy.

So the whole plot is revealed at quite an early stage. All Jem has to do is find the proof he needs and he can turf out the widow and reclaim his property. But Claudia soon cottons on to what he’s up to, and since she doesn’t want to be turfed out, and loves Ravencroft just as much as he does, the race is on to outwit him. I’m going to be honest here – I disapproved of Claudia’s methods here. I understood why she did it, and in a way it got everyone what they wanted, but it was dishonest and it was hardly surprising that it caused so many problems later.

Along the way, there’s Claudia’s downtrodden sister and her husband, a pair who just want Claudia to accept that a woman can’t manage an estate all by herself and that she needs another husband so that she can retreat to the drawing room and be a lady as she’s supposed to, not to mention a rumbustious boy and dog. After a lot of angry stubbornness from the principals, the ending is a bit contrived, but it does feature one of the best declarations of love I’ve ever come across. Lots of minor Americanisms which didn’t bother me too badly (apart from ‘taffy-coloured’ hair! We don’t have taffy in Britain). Five stars.

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Review: A Lady’s Fortune by Jane Dunn (2024)

Posted April 15, 2025 by Mary Kingswood in Review / 0 Comments

This is a difficult one for me to rate. On the one hand, there’s nothing major wrong with it, really. It just never set me alight… no, worse than that, it never even became interesting. Dull characters, predictable plot, and writing that, while competent, never sparkled.

Here’s the premise: Leonora Appleby is twenty-seven and settling into spinsterhood. She’s about to be forced out of her childhood home since the new heir will soon be arriving to claim it. Meanwhile, on a neighbouring estate, the mysterious Earl Rokeby has returned, injured after the war, a younger brother inheriting after his brother died in battle. And for Leonora’s best friend, Charlotte Blythe, abandoned at birth on the vicar’s doorstep, there’s a change which leads both girls, and former nanny Mrs Priddy, to London for the season.

I don’t know why it is that so many authors, when they decide to dive into Regency England, are so obsessed with the London season. There are so many other interesting settings to choose from, and frankly, the tired old trope of the country ingenues adjusting to the different society of London was done to death decades ago, and to sparkling effect by Georgette Heyer herself. It’s disappointing to find so little originality in an author who is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

At least she has done her research, and a great deal of it if the repeated descriptions of clothes, furniture and architecture is anything to go by. It certainly adds colour, and if I could have done with a trifle less colour, that’s just me. There’s less excuse for the title errors. One character is referred to as both Lady Livia Dearlove and the Honourable Miss Dearlove. She can only be one or the other, not both. And the curate is referred to as ‘Curate Fopling’ throughout. Clergymen were only ever addressed as Mr Fopling (or Dr, if he was a Doctor of Divinity, like Dr Grant in Mansfield Park).

But what about the characters? The plot? The romance? Well… this is where it gets tricky. There are certain expectations for a Regency romance: it must have either a rattling plot, or appealing characterisation, or emotional depth, or scintillating dialogue. I’d like wit as well, but that may be asking a bit much. Obviously, the more of them the better, but it must have at least one of these facets to engage the reader. This book? Not so much. The plot, far from rattling, was a pedestrian affair without a single surprising feature. The characters, particularly the two females, start off well. Leonora, in particular, being older, is both sensible and intelligent, but towards the end the need for some bumps in the road to the inevitable happy ending sees her descending into stupidity. Charlotte’s silliness is more excusable given her age, but really, people, how hard is it to just tell people what’s going on and not try to do it all yourself? The two leading men were very likeable and suitably heroic, but a little bit of self-awareness of their own feelings wouldn’t have gone amiss. The villains were straight from central casting, a pair of standard-issue antagonists.

What about emotional depth? This is what I think of as the Mary Balogh effect – she may be wobbly on historical accuracy, and her characters behave in some wildly peculiar ways, but she makes me cry every single time. This author, not so much. For one thing, time after time she tells us what the characters are thinking and feeling, instead of showing us. And then she headhops with gay abandon, jumping from one character’s point of view to another even within the same paragraph. All of that serves to distance the reader from the characters, so when we really should be feeling their pain or fear or anger, we never do. And the big reveals are just tossed out there, without any emotional resonance at all. Not that they were surprising or anything, but still.

As for scintillating dialogue, I cut the author some slack here, because it’s a hard thing to do, and genuine wit is as rare as hen’s teeth. I don’t think I laughed once while reading this. Even so, there were some very intense exchanges between Leonora and Lord Rokeby (and sometimes in some bizarre places – a ballroom, for instance, or a carriage with the chaperon ‘pretending’ to sleep). I should perhaps mention that Mrs Priddy must be the world’s worst chaperon. She sat with her knitting at the ball, leaving her charges unattended, and at the end, Leonora and Rokeby are stripping off and getting hot and heavy while she (again) ‘pretends’ to sleep! Ridiculous.

This seems like a long catalogue of complaints, and it is, I suppose, but it’s more from disappointment than anything else. There are plenty of Regencies that I can get through despite a multitude of errors because I don’t expect much from them, but Jane Dunn is a different case (a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, for heaven’s sake!). So it ought to be literature, right? And perhaps at some level that I don’t fully appreciate, it is. Maybe I’m so attuned to the entertainment end of the genre that I can’t see a good book when it’s in front of me. But my personal requirement is to be entertained. If the author can’t tell a good story which draws me in and immerses me in the lives of these people, then I’m going to mark it down. I’d have given it two stars except that there’s some lovely writing in the descriptions of settings and clothes, so I’m going to be generous and go for three stars.

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Review: The Vicar and the Village Scandal by Rosanne E Lortz (2023)

Posted April 15, 2025 by Mary Kingswood in Review / 0 Comments

It’s always interesting to revisit the bad guy from an earlier book and see him reformed and finding his own happiness. It’s a hard act to pull off, and I think the author cheats a little here – we don’t actually see Thomas reform himself, he just appears at the start of the book, several years later, so far reformed that he’s a curate in an impoverished rural parish, now living a blameless life. He’s then given the living at his old home, where everyone remembers him from his wild former existence, and he has an uphill task to convince everyone that yes, he really has changed. And it doesn’t help that a mysterious woman appears and deposits a boy of eight on his doorstep, before disappearing again. Is the boy Thomas’s?

It’s not surprising that everyone is suspicious. Mary Bates, eldest daughter of the smith and Abbey steward, is willing to believe in him, but her father isn’t and forbids her to have anything to do with him, thus providing basically the only obstacle to what would otherwise be a perfectly smooth romance. There’s a lovely moment when Thomas first sees Mary again, with one of her younger brothers in tow. He remembers her very well as the prettiest of the village girls, but he assumes she must be married, especially as he sees her with a young child in tow (her brother, as it happens). “Mrs… er?” he says, and it comes across as though he doesn’t remember her at all.

From then onwards, things unfold pretty much as expected, with both Mary and Thomas trying very hard to abide by her father’s strictures (which is completely in line with Regency mores, so no problem there), and Thomas trying both to do his best for the boy left in his care, while also convince the locals that he really has become an upright citizen. My only quibble is a legal one: no, you can’t legitimise an illegitimate child by marrying, not in England, at any rate.

A nice read, a suitably romantic ending and a good four stars.

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Review: The Village Spinster by Laura Matthews (1993)

Posted April 15, 2025 by Mary Kingswood in Review / 0 Comments

A sweet and undemanding tale with no real villain, no great misunderstandings and no improbable plot developments (elopements, kidnappings, highwaymen and the like). Sensible, mature protagonists and a low key but slowly growing romance. It sounds as if nothing happens, and perhaps that’s true, but I found it a delightful read all the same.

Here’s the premise: Clarissa Driscoll used to be the daughter of Pennhurst, the local manor house. Unfortunately, her father gambled away the family fortune, leaving her almost destitute. Now, as a spinster of twenty-seven, she lives in a tiny cottage in the nearest village with a maid of all work, scraping a living by teaching the sons and daughters of the local gentry, in particular Aria, the fifteen-year-old sister of the Earl of Kinsford, and her seventeen-year-old brother, William (when he isn’t at school). The earl is a distant guardian, spending most of his time in London, and the children’s mother is even more hands-off, even though she lives in the same house. So Clarissa is almost the children’s only respectable friend.

The interesting point is that Clarissa and Alexander (the earl) have some history, having shared a passionate kiss some years ago. Then life intervened, he spent some years in the army, she was reduced in status and now they’re merely distantly polite neighbours. When he comes home to find out why William has been rusticated from school and discovers that Clarissa has already dealt with the situation in her own forthright way, he is understandably aggrieved. But when Aria has a fall from her horse, and ends up recovering at Clarissa’s cottage, the two are thrown together far more than before and things come very much to the boil, aided by Aria, who decides to play matchmaker by prolonging her illness to keep throwing Alexander and Clarissa together.

A number of reviews complain that there’s no sign of the romance until the very end of the book. I disagree. It’s obvious to me that even though they argue constantly early on (or rather, Alexander gets very cross and Clarissa speaks her mind forthrightly) there’s still a very strong attraction between them. In particular, Alexander’s concerns about the amount of time Clarissa spends with her (male) cousin (long walks in the countryside! Sitting together indoors unchaperoned!! Waltzing!!!) are driven by jealousy. The development of the romance is certainly subtle, but I thought it was very clear. There’s one conversation in particular, where he first calls her by her Christian name, that positively crackles with unexpressed romantic tension (a beautifully written scene).

The final chapters break out almost into farce, with the arrival of the cousin’s previously unseen wife, and the children’s mother, as well as the rest of the regular cast, all crammed into Clarissa’s little cottage. It was hysterically funny without ever going over the top, and finished up with a fine romantic denouement. Lovely stuff, and apart from a smattering of Americanisms, perfectly written. Five stars.

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