This was a total riot, good fun from start to finish. It’s very traditional in style, but given its age that’s only to be expected, and unlike some of that vintage, the romance was quite well developed and not bolted on as an afterthought. And there was not a single kidnapping or elopement or other overblown melodrama.
Here’s the premise: Daphne Ingleside lives a quiet, respectable life in the Wiltshire countryside, but when her disreputable Aunt Effie, now a widow for the second time after being scandalously divorced by her first husband, asks for her company in London, she sees an opportunity for a little fun and a somewhat more lively setting. But this isn’t the conventional Regency with balls and routs and the Marriage Mart. Aunt Effie is too poor and disreputable to be invited anywhere. Daphne doesn’t mind. London is exciting enough, and she doesn’t much care to be paraded around anyway. She’ll have a nice quiet time with her aunt, and find something to fill the time. Perhaps her aunt, with her long and unusual history, could write her memoirs?
And all of a sudden, Aunt Effie’s quiet, retired life becomes rather exciting. As soon as the notice appears in the newspaper that she’s writing her memoirs, old friends start appearing and pressing large sums of money into her hands. Some were people she loaned money to, who never paid it back, but some were vaguer about their reasons. Effie thinks they’re just being kind to an old friend, but Daphne realises at once that they all hope to keep their own names out of the book. She finds it all vastly amusing, and of course the money is a great help to Effie.
Into this entertaining situation comes the very unentertaining Richard, the Duke of St Felix, sent by his sister to keep her husband’s name out of the book. But he’s an arrogant so and so, and Daphne can’t resist crossing swords with him, winding him up thoroughly. He leaves believing they are hardened blackmailers, and becomes determined to best the sharp-tongued little termagant. Somehow, he finds reason after reason to return to Aunt Effie’s shabby little apartment to spar with Daphne, and somehow, little by little, Daphne and Effie are edged back into society again, to be befriended by Beau Brummell and the Prince of Wales, no less. Their success is assured… or so it would seem. But their position is precarious, and one slip could see them fall from grace again.
From then onwards, nothing quite goes as expected (at least, not as I expected, anyway). But the romance develops beautifully. It’s always problematic for an author who’s set up the two main characters to be at each other’s throats – enemies to lovers is surely the most difficult trope to pull off, because how can two people who hate each other so much ever end up in love? It defies credibility, yet Joan Smith manages it beautifully, without any trickery, as Daphne and Richard gradually come to realise how things are. Daphne is a little bit too eccentric at times, and perhaps too determined to defy convention just to spite her ‘enemy’, but Richard is steadfast and true, and quite determined to see Daphne and her disreputable aunt restored to society, come what may.
For those who dislike Americanisms, you might want to avoid this one, littered as it is with ‘gotten’ and ‘fall’ and others too numerous to mention, but I was enjoying myself too much to mind. It’s highly recommended for banter aficianados, though, for the spirited exchanges between the two protagonists are glorious. Joan Smith can be a bit variable, but I found this to be one of her more successful efforts. Five stars.
This was really quirky in some ways, but it was still a lot of fun. It’s necessary to suspend all critical faculties, however, for none of it makes a great deal of sense, but if you can go with the flow, it’s highly readable.
I absolutely loved this book, every last word of it. It’s a very simple story, but our hero and heroine are lovely, there’s a strong backup cast and a wealth of local detail that I found fascinating.
I’m having a good run of reads at the moment, all of older books or, as in this case, a newer book by an established author. Diane Farr wrote some of my favourite Regencies from around twenty years ago, so it was a real treat to discover this newer work that’s very much in the same vein. It’s a lovely, light read, although with some serious moments when the subject of slavery arises. Very much one for the traditionalists.
Mira Stables is one of my go-to authors. I can usually depend on finding a great read, although the plots and characters and styles vary wildly from book to book. Some work in spite of quirks, but this one has no quirks at all – it’s a straight down the line traditional Regency that sticks closely to the tropes and manages to have a certain amount of drama without a villain and without the usual kidnapping at the end, so thank heavens for that.
This is the third and final part of the trilogy, and unlike book 2, it really does help to have read the earlier books first. This is the book where all the pigeons come home to roost, so to speak. In book 1, fortune hunter Jason, Lord Kilmore tried to elope with Alison Larkin. In book 2, he actually did elope with an heiress, but when that fell apart, he married another heiress, Penny Bryant. This book picks up the story a few weeks or months later. Jason has already gone to London, and his mother, his two sisters and his new wife are travelling south from their home near the Scottish border to join him. Penny is pregnant and finding morning sickness rather a trial, and Megan is suffering from a migraine. The ladies stop at an inn, and it’s shy, timid Thea who’s dispatched to secure rooms for them, since the other ladies aren’t up to the job.
This was a complete riot. Two eloping couples meet on the way to Gretna Green, and as their journeys become more and more entwined, it becomes clear that the pairings are sadly mismatched. It’s a follow-on to A Lord For Miss Larkin, but there’s very little reference to that story, except that the hero here was the villain (of a sort) in the earlier book.
I’m a fan of Carola Dunn’s Regencies, and although they don’t all work for me, that’s true of any author, and the writing is always superb, even if I do occasionally want to throttle the hero. But no such difficulties here. Mr Philip Trevelyan is the perfect hero, a man who makes things happen and can always be depended on, and he has almost superhuman powers of restraint, a characteristic which all Regency gentlemen should display but often don’t.
I absolutely loved the first book of this series, so reading this follow-on was a no-brainer. Curiously, though, although it started out in grand style, I soon found my interest waning. Twice I set it aside to read something else, or several something elses, and grew increasingly reluctant to pick it up again. I’m not quite sure why, because all the elements I loved in the first one are here again, but somehow it just didn’t work as well for me.
This is a strange book. I’ve read other books by this author, and they were all light, fluffy affairs. This is a much more serious read, longer, wordier and darker generally. It also has an odd structure, where the first third of the book is essentially prologue, a long, rambling exposition of the backstory to the main part of the novel. It would be very easy to read the blurb and start reading and then wonder if you had the wrong book altogether. I know, because that’s exactly what I did.