Oh, the joy of discovering a new Joyce Harmon book! This series is just so much fun, and this episode, although somewhat gentler than some of the previous books, is still a delight. Still no sign of the handsome lord (and battle mage!!) I’ve been hankering after for several books now, but there is some potential love interest for our heroine.

Here’s the premise: bookish Mary Bennet, the little-regarded middle daughter of the Bennet family of Pride and Prejudice fame, has turned out to have a hidden talent – she can do magic! And because she didn’t discover this ability until adulthood and the perusal of a mysterious book found in the Bingleys’ library, her talent is untrained and therefore unusual. After four adventures, she’s back at Longbourn for a quieter time, she hopes, in celebrating Kitty’s marriage to a local vicar. But odd things start to happen which Mary, away from her magical mentors for the first time, has to deal with on her own, which she manages very well, with just a little help from her friends.

There’s also a serious love interest for the first time. Mr Whittaker has recently inherited a sizeable estate in the neighbourhood, he’s a scholar like Mary and he’s sensible, personable and totally nice. And he’s definitely interested. What should Mary do? This is a major dilemma for her, and the philosophical question of the wisdom of magicians marrying ‘muggles’ (so to speak) is dealt with very rationally. I liked that Mary was able to think it through and reach a conclusion she’ll be able to live with without regret.

The dramatic finale isn’t quite as earth-shattering as some of the previous books, and the villain wasn’t really terribly villainous, more a silly annoyance, but there was a very surprising twist at the end which I totally loved. I’ll be interested in seeing where (if anywhere) that goes. I’m also still hoping for the reappearance of the handsome young lord (Viscount St Ives, he of the honey-coloured hair). Since Mary keeps remembering him, I’m reasonably optimistic he’s not gone forever, and now Mary’s been invited to participate in some secret mission for the magical Order, so… fingers crossed.

If I were being picky, I’d say that nothing much happens in this book, but that’s not entirely true. The events are less dramatic, and the magical interactions are more charming than threatening, but that just makes it even more of a pleasure to read. The language isn’t always totally authentic, but when you’re swept up in the story it doesn’t really matter. A lovely read. Five stars.

I’ve never read a Joyce Harmon book yet that I didn’t love, and here’s another one. Beautifully written, clever and, best of all, funny, this was just a pleasure to read from start to finish.

Here’s the premise: Peter Barton is a humble actor who found himself playing the role of a gentleman. I think this happened in a previous book in the series, although I don’t remember it. Anyway, he discovered he was rather convincing at it, and able to make a living by winning regularly at cards. His memory has been sharpened by learning lines, so he finds it easy to remember cards, too (I’m not totally convinced that skill transfers readily, but never mind). So for several years he’s been living a low-key existence on the fringes of London society, but now he’s being pursued by a marriage-minded young lady, and the smallest investigation into his circumstances will reveal what a fraud he is.

Amy Greenlow, on the other hand, is a lady who’s been forced by dire circumstances to become an actress on the stage, taking the name of Amadora. She’s become a great success but she has many men pursuing her in the hopes of making her their mistress, and one of them, the creepy Marquis of Grissam, is very, very determined. It doesn’t take long for Peter to see a solution to both their difficulties if he pretends to be Amy’s protector, thus deterring both their ardent pursuers.

This is a delicious twist on the fake betrothal trope, and of course it isn’t long before the two are falling into scrapes with the deception, and in between times falling in love. I loved both hero and heroine here. They’re both intelligent, resourceful people who find creative ways out of their difficulties, and even at the end, there’s a neat and unexpected twist, which I didn’t see coming even though it was completely in character. And did I mention that it’s laugh-out-loud funny? Here’s just one exchange that I loved:

“Ma’am!” he breathed, “your most humble… devoted… loyal… ardent…”
“A noun, Chilly,” Peter advised lazily. “We could really use a noun right about now.”

A delightful tale, a lovely slow-build romance and an excellent five stars.

Well, this was a whole heap of fun! A Pride and Prejudice sequel with a little light magic thrown in.

Here’s the premise: Jane and Bingley have been married for about a year, and have settled in an estate in Cheshire. After a visit to Longbourn, they take bookish Mary Bennet back with them where she discovers their enormous library and some very peculiar books…

If you always thought there was more to Mary Bennet than meets the eye, this is the book for you. This is not the Mary of P&P, the rather peevish girl who practiced her music and studied books constantly but played very badly and displayed no understanding gleaned from her learning. That was Mary seen through the cynical eyes of her sister Elizabeth. But this is Mary’s own story, and since we’re privy to her inner thoughts, she turns out to be surprisingly intelligent and self-aware and even manipulative at times to get what she wants. I liked her very much.

The middle part of the story got a bit slow, since it was largely about Mary being taught some magical precepts by a pair of mentors. I thought of it as the Harry Potter section, where Mary sort of goes to magic school. If you like your magic explained to you in depth, you’ll enjoy this very much, but I far preferred Mary’s own experiments, or anything where things were happening, rather than sitting around in the library talking. But once Caroline Bingley arrives on a husband-hunting mission (not that she’s being typecast, or anything…), and a suitor emerges for Mary the pace hots up a bit, and then it’s all downhill for the dramatic ride to the finishing line.

I didn’t spot the villain, but then I never do. I’m constantly surprised when that really nice, friendly character turns out to be an evil so-and-so. The resolution was very neatly done – a satisfying comeuppance. And Caroline Bingley gets a gentler resolution than perhaps she deserves.

There’s no romance at all in Mary’s life, at least not in this book. Since this is the first of a series, I’m optimistic that she’ll meet a charming and handsome young wizard somewhere on her adventures. A pleasant, easy read, with an unexpectedly congenial Mary Bennet, totally canonical Jane, Bingley and Caroline, and some interesting side characters. Four stars. I hope it won’t be too long until the next book in the series.

Every Joyce Harmon book is a delight and this one is no exception. For anyone looking for a substitute for Georgette Heyer, here’s an author who might just fit the bill. She has a light hand with dialogue, a strong array of characters and plots that effortlessly unfurl. This one eschews the standard Regency settings of society London or Bath, being firmly set in a small village, but that makes it a gentler, more affectionate look at Regency life. And it’s very, very funny. I do love a book which makes me chuckle all the way through.

Heroine Katherine is the oldest of her family, now orphaned by the recent death of her father. But amongst his scholarly papers she finds a half-written Gothic novel, the latest in a long line of them, by which her father had secretly been supporting his family. Katherine realises that, to keep a roof over their heads, she has to continue her father’s novel-writing career.

Our hero is the long-awaited brother of a duke, a soldier returning from the wars to claim his estate and find himself a suitable wife. The ladies of the village have their own ideas on the subject of suitability, and handsome Lord Charles sets many a female heart a-fluttering – except for Katherine, who’s busy fending off the attentions of the worthy young vicar while shouldering all the burdens of her family.

As with Heyer, the subplots, which involve a couple of boys behaving boyishly and much Gothic fun and games, tend to overshadow the romance at times, and although we see Charles’ moment of revelation regarding Katherine, we never see hers towards him (or at least, it is so understated as to be almost invisible), which was a great pity. I do like to see the protagonists inching towards an understanding. But both of them behaved with intelligence and common sense, no one acted stupidly in pique and (hallelujah!) there were no contrived misunderstandings.

Some of the loose ends tidied up and the other pairings resulting seemed a little too convenient to me, but I won’t quibble. There were a very few typos, and a smattering of Americanisms (gotten, fall instead of autumn), but Harmon has such a strong grasp of the Regency era that it never bothered me. This is a lovely traditional Regency, very much in the style of Georgette Heyer, and I highly recommend it, and all Harmon’s books, to all Heyer fans. Five stars.

This is one of those delightful books that is filled with something that’s so rare in modern writing – charm. It manages to be whimsical without being silly, it’s effortlessly funny and the plot rattles along at a nice pace. And three rousing cheers for a romance featuring a decidedly older couple. Yes, there’s a side romance with a younger pair, but that never overshadows the main event.

The plot is a simple one: the Earl of Salford has returned from the wars to find his estate on the verge of ruin at the hands of his cousin and heir. The estate can be rescued, but as soon as the aging earl pops off, the heir will take over again, unless he can produce an heir to transplant the cousin. In most Regencies, this would be the cue for a marriage of convenience plot, but the earl refuses to play that game. Instead, he trawls the family tree and finds a missing branch of the family which meandered off into middle-class-dom a couple of generations ago.

To track down the missing heir, he recruits his good friend Eliza Merryhew, and to make things more fun, they travel incognito, as a baron’s widow and her devoted manservant. Which just makes things even more entertaining, of course. If the search is a little too easily resolved, that just leaves a little more time for those romances to brew up. My only complaint is that the story is too short – I really wanted more about this lovely couple! Five stars.

I love the idea of this: identical twin sisters, but with very different personalities, are making their come-out, but there’s only enough money for one of them to do the season in London. The other is to stay in a small country village, but they’ll meet up once a week… and naturally a certain amount of swapping places goes on. Well, the story practically writes itself, doesn’t it?

The biggest problem is that the reader is inevitably tossed from town to country and back again with dizzying frequency. There are different sets of characters in each to remember, and the two sisters swap names too, so the potential for confusion is enormous. And to make things worse, there are no scene breaks provided, so I regularly missed the signs of a new setting. It would have been so helpful to mark each change of location explicitly, whether London or Piddledean (glorious name!), to avoid confusion. However, by about the halfway point, everything began to fall into place, and there was no more than a momentary where-are-we? sort-out at each jump or new chapter.

The characters are lovely. There are no wicked villains, no real nastiness, apart from a couple of cutting remarks from a previously spurned girlfriend, and everybody means well and acts sensibly and thoughtfully. Nothing of a terribly untoward nature happens, and if the romances fall into place rather too easily, the story is so delicious that I can forgive it. I particularly liked Mama, who, unlike most such characters, isn’t merely a plot device, but has her own very interesting story running alongside her daughters’.

This is a Regency romance of the old school, where the backdrop is the season, the objective is marriage, everyone meets everyone in Hyde Park and there’s a major waltz scene at Almack’s (which is wonderful, by the way). Any reader looking for hot sex, a moustache-twirling villain, a heroine who strides about in trousers smoking cheroots or similar should move swiftly on. No Regency conventions are flouted here, and the language is mostly authentic. There are one or two turns of phrase (’visit with’ or ‘fall’, for instance) that sounded too American, but it wasn’t intrusive.

The book reads well enough as a standalone, but there are suggestions of previous books here and there, as various characters and events are alluded to. So if you’re a stickler for reading in order, you might want to check out the author’s other books first.

This is a delightful story that I thoroughly enjoyed from beginning to end. Five stars, and I’m going straight off to root out the author’s other Regencies.