I’m loving this new series of Martha Keyes’. I recommend starting with the free (at the time of writing) prequel, Unrequited, and paying attention to the whole family – they really are an interesting lot. This one focuses on the sister and brother of the previous hero and heroine, one an unreformed rake and the other a girl who’s been buried in the country for years finally making a belated appearance in society. It’s a fascinating pairing.

Here’s the premise: Valentine Donovan is that staple of Regency romances, an out-and-out rake, a gambler, womaniser and thoroughly unreliable sort. He’s butted heads with his Admiral father for years, dropping out of the naval career that was planned for him, and getting himself into all sorts of trouble ever since. Finding himself on his father’s wrong side once more, he escapes to the Brighton home of his newly married sister, Diana. Creeping into the house through the kitchen window after a drunken night out, he encounters a girl enjoying a midnight feast, a girl like no one else he’s ever met before.

Rebecca Russell’s brother has finally married, and at last she’s able to leave the seclusion of her reclusive grandfather’s home, where she mingled only with other elderly gentlemen, and make an appearance in Brighton society. She’s never had a chance to develop the finely-tuned social skills she’ll need in high society, and she has no idea how to behave. Her innocence gets her into all sorts of trouble, but she finds Valentine unexpectedly helpful. He knows he’s bad for her, though, so he does his best to avoid her. But when his father gives him an ultimatum – at least try to behave with restraint and start courting a respectable young woman — Diana coaxes him to squire Rebecca around. It will be good for her, she argues, to learn about society while protected by a gentleman, and it will be good for him to demonstrate his good intentions to his father.

Well, we can see where this is going, can’t we? And two more mismatched people would be hard to find. But if Valentine is a conventional Regency character, Rebecca is anything but. She has no idea about anything, and approaches everything with an infectious joie-de-vivre that’s an absolute delight. Her conversations with Valentine, where she asks in all innocence some very probing questions, are glorious. She learns a lot, and charmingly mangles all the terminology (she talks about ‘foxing’ and ‘raking’, instead of getting foxed or being a rake), making detailed and often wildly inappropriate lists of all sorts of things. And in explaining society ways in uncompromising detail, Valentine is forced to face up to his own misbehaviour. In gently steering Rebecca through the obstacle course of society life, he learns to take responsibility for himself, as well. And needless to say, the two are slowly falling in love.

But the course of true love can’t possibly be smooth (this is a Regency romance, after all), so both Valentine’s father and Rebecca’s brother have to be appeased, and Valentine’s precarious financial situation has to become a lot worse before all is resolved. I don’t recall any Americanisms or anything else to trip me up, although the monetary amounts stated seemed a bit on the low side to me. At one point, eight hundred pounds was quoted as allowing the purchase of a small estate, which seems a bit unlikely. A small house, maybe. But that’s not a big deal.

The only real problem I had was that the story was told from two points of view, but both were written in first person (‘I went…’ rather than ‘Valentine went…’). Even though the chapters were labelled with the character name, I still sometimes got confused with the switches, and ended up at one point wondering why Valentine was wearing a gauzy overdress. Silly me. That’s the author’s stylistic choice, of course, which I perfectly respect, and I understand why it was done, but it can be problematic. I suppose I should read more slowly!

Another lovely read in this series, which gave us some more wonderful characters, a deeper understanding of the family, and especially the Admiral, and a beautifully written evocation of the Regency. Five stars (again). And now on to book-loving brother Phineas…

I’d almost forgotten just how good Martha Keyes is. I’ve been a fan of hers since first stumbling across Wyndcross three years ago, and read all her early work avidly. She took an authorly excursion to Scotland, which didn’t interest me, but now she’s back in the English Regency and she’s only improved in the interim. This is the prequel to her new series, and it’s a wonderful, nuanced, layered work. I loved it.

Here’s the premise: Elena MacKinnon is an orphan, whose four brothers are all serving in the army. Elena can’t stay alone at their Scottish estate, so she’s been living with her godfather’s family for seven years, being educated in the ways of English ladylike behaviour. Her godfather, Admiral Donovan, has three sons, Theo, Phineas and Valentine. Theo has been at sea, following in his father’s footsteps, but it’s not clear to me quite what the other two have been doing. All we know is that Phineas is bookish, and Valentine is the cynical, wayward one. There is also a daughter, Diana, and since the death of Mrs Donovan, the girls have been largely left to their own devices. But now, with the end of the war, Admiral Donovan and Theo are coming home. Although Theo’s just been promoted to Captain, his future is uncertain, as there’s a lack of naval vessels to command.

That’s a fairly brief summary, for this is a family with a LOT of history. Some of it we read about here, like the lingering illness and death of Mrs Donovan, and some is obviously being saved for future books in the series (Phineas and Valentine, for instance). But the key piece of history is between Elena and Theo, and the letter she tucked in his luggage as he left for sea several years ago, when he was nineteen and she an impassioned and lovesick fourteen. He broke her heart by never writing back. Now he’s home again, they’ve both changed but is there the possibility of a grown-up love for them? Or should she marry Mr Bailey, the dull but worthy man Admiral Donovan is steering her towards?

The answer is obvious, of course, but how they reach their happy ever after is an absolute delight.
Keyes has the power to weave a multitude of strong story threads into beautiful cloth. Every one of these characters springs to life on the pages as a fully rounded person, with history and temperament and an agenda of their own, and their interactions feel like spontaneous reactions rather than plot devices. There are no villains here, just good people doing the best they can according to their lights, and making mistakes along the way, mistakes that ripple through the family.

There’s so much depth here. For example, Elena is Scottish, and her normal accent is a strong brogue, but she’s learnt to moderate her voice into a more ladylike English accent. But is she throwing away her heritage with the accent? Can she be true to herself with a false voice? If she is to consider marrying Mr Bailey, she has to talk like a lady but can she maintain that indefinitely? Or should he accept her as she really is? The attitude of the English characters to Scotland both intrigued and amused me, particularly the Baileys, since they see the Scots as barbaric heathens (unless they present themselves in a flawlessly English way, of course). But Elena has the best line: “The English took a strange view of [Scotland]— simultaneously romanticizing it and looking down upon it— but I felt uncomfortable with both approaches. For me, it was simply home and all that such a word encapsulated.” And that’s just one of many threads running through the book.

But what of the romance? There isn’t the joy of watching the two fall in love, for Elena did that long ago. For her, there’s the agony of seeing Theo again, not knowing whether they can even rekindle the close friendship of their childhood years, and she doesn’t dare to hope beyond that. For him… well, we don’t know what he feels, because the story is all written from Elena’s point of view, so the reader has to glean hints of his state of mind from his words and actions, and try to interpret the subtlest gesture, just as she does. I normally prefer to see both points of view, but here it works perfectly.

Theo’s feelings are gradually revealed, but of course there’s more to a Regency romance than just feelings. What about Theo’s career in the navy? And perhaps more important, what about his father’s wishes for him and the obligations of family duty? This is why I say this book is nuanced, because all of this comes into play, and much more, before the situation is resolved. And along the way there are some memorable interactions between the two, particularly those walks on the beach.

The writing is excellent on every level, and very little tripped me up. Admiral John Bailey is a baronet, so he should be Admiral Sir John Bailey, surely? And I wondered about the use of ‘trek’, which sounds too modern to me, but the Oxford English Dictionary puts it at 1824, which is close enough. One or two Americanisms, but trivial stuff.

This is a book about being true to yourself, and not having your life dictated by other people’s expectations of you, and it’s also about family and home and freedom and a lot more besides. It’s a short book but with tons of depth, and it was free when I got it. A great read – highly recommended. Five stars.

I read this straight after book 3 of the series, Cecilia, and here we have another book with a fascinating premise: three months after marrying for love, Lady Anne Vincent discovers that her supposed husband was a bigamist. She isn’t married at all, and her future options are limited. She daren’t risk her heart in another love match, so when her father proposes a marriage of convenience for her, she accepts without demur. Tobias Cosgrove (brother of Cecilia and her sisters) knows he must marry, as the son and heir, but a marriage of convenience may be just the ticket, allowing him to continue his free-wheeling ways without interference.

Naturally, what starts out as a marriage of cool self-sufficiency, both leading their own independent lives and hardly meeting except by accident, gradually becomes something more. I liked the way they inched oh-so-gradually towards a deeper relationship, as she begins to feel the loneliness of her life, and he begins to appreciate the value of a friend at home. Along the way, there are outbreaks of slightly over-the-top high spirits, which serve to break down the reserve between them, and times when they talked as adults. I particularly enjoyed the scene where they sat together in the bedroom – very powerful and memorable. It helps that they’re both sensible, likable characters that the reader can totally root for.

But of course it can’t all be plain sailing, as Anne’s past returns to haunt her and the fragile rapport between Anne and Tobias is in danger of splintering. I wasn’t entirely convinced by these later episodes, with all the melodramas and misunderstandings, but by that time I was too invested to worry about it, and the ending was just perfect.

A lovely traditional Regency with two very sympathetic characters, and the author’s assured grasp of the Regency era. Highly recommended. Five stars.

A lovely second-chance romance by one of my new favourite authors. I’ve never quite understood the appeal of Christmas romances, especially in the Regency which really didn’t make a big deal of the holiday season (it became huge in the Victorian era) but the author makes a convincing case for it here, since the heroine has German ancestry and therefore has the whole Christmas tree tradition. With or without the Christmas tree (with naked candles! Yikes! Mr Health and Mr Safety would NOT approve!), the whole snowed-up setting works perfectly for this particular story.

The premise is that eldest son and heir Hugh Warrilow was expected to marry the neighbours’ eldest daughter, Lucy Caldwell, but he disgraced himself by jilting her and running off to join the army. Now, three years later, he’s returned home, determined to set matters right and try to forget the reason for the jilting – that he was in love with Lucy’s sister Emma. For her part, Emma will never forgive Hugh for what he did, and now they’re snowed up together at his home…

There’s nothing unexpected about this story which unfolds delightfully. Both Hugh and Emma were perfectly believable and sympathetic characters, and their gradual rapprochement was a joy to watch. I loved the sledges in the snow, and also the parlour game snapdragon (a new one to me). I felt there was rather too much angsty backstory squeezed in, what with the war widow, the survivor and the brother’s betrothal issues, but that’s not really a complaint because they all serve to increase Hugh’s guilt. I would have liked, too, for Hugh himself to have confessed all to Emma, instead of leaving it to others to enlighten her, but again, not a complaint.

A couple of very trivial niggles. When Hugh comes home unannounced, there are no servants to greet him and he carries his own luggage into the house and simply walks into the dining room. I found that a real stretch. There would at the very least have been grooms or kitchen staff around, and where was his valet or batman? And then he sits down to join the others for dinner, a place already set (they were psychic!) and without changing out of his travel-stained clothes into evening dress. Um, no. Also, one character is described as a ‘country barrister’. Barristers are the top-ranked lawyers, who put the case in the highest courts, so they’re based in the cities. A country lawyer would be an attorney, whose work is the boring transfer of bits of land or flocks of sheep. Totally trivial niggles, which didn’t spoil my enjoyment at all.

A great read. Five stars.

A short and sweet free story from one of my new favourite authors. Phoebe is awaiting the return of the man she loves from his tour of the continent. Without a formal betrothal, she wasn’t able to write to him, but every day she wrote a line or two in a year-long letter. Now she awaits his arrival at a ball, with the letter heavy in her reticule. But before he appears, she overhears dreadful news – he’s enamoured of a woman he met he France. So when she finally meets him again, to save her pride she makes up an attachment to another man.

And so the stage is set for a story that’s based entirely on that time-honoured plot, the Great Misunderstanding. We know this because we can see inside the head of lover George, and know that he’s stayed faithful to Phoebe and he’s bewildered and hurt by her seeming defection. Fortunately, Phoebe’s sensible enough not to let George leave again without at least showing him her letter, and the story is short enough that matters get resolved speedily.

I have some very minor quibbles. I’d have preferred the letter to play a bigger role in the resolution than it did, purely for the symmetry, and I felt there was too much explanation at the end of things which the reader already knows and don’t need to be spelt out. There would have been more tension, too, if we hadn’t known exactly what George was feeling. But the romance ended beautifully, and the writing is excellent, as always. Four stars.

I loved Wyndcross, the predecessor to this book, so I knew right from the start that I would love this, too, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a very different story, in many ways a more conventional Regency romance, complete with that time-honoured plot-device, the fake betrothal, and perhaps it doesn’t quite reach the sublime heights of Wyndcross, but that was a very high bar.

Isabel Cosgrove, our heroine, had a walk-on role in the previous book, but it’s not necessary to have read that one first. This book picks up Isabel’s story in London in the midst of the shared season for her and her sister, up from Dorset for the occasion, and Isabel is suffering in comparison with the beautiful Cecilia. Our hero, Charles Galbraith, is in thrall to one of the ton’s incomparables, Julia Darling, who is a flighty piece, seeming to have lost interest in him in favour of another eligible. So Charles does what any young man would do when spurned by the woman he loves – he goes off and gets blind drunk, so drunk that he ends up in a wager with Isabel’s father, and wins her hand in marriage.

Now, there’s a lot to take on board here. Superficially it makes both Charles and Mr Cosgrove look like idiots. Charles is not only throwing away any possibility of Julia changing her mind again and coming back to him, he’s also binding himself for life to a woman he barely knows. And as for Mr Cosgrove, he looks like the world’s worst father for agreeing to such a wager in the first place (although, to be fair, he does have a better reason for his actions than mere drunken caprice). But Charles doesn’t, and the author sets herself quite a challenge here – from such an unpromising beginning, to make Charles into a sympathetic and heroic character. It’s a testament to her skill that she achieves this splendidly.

Fortunately for the reader inclined to dislike drunken Charles (ie me), sober Charles turns out to be a charming and honourable man, who immediately makes Isabel an offer in form. Which she rejects, even though she’s had the hots for him for years, because she doesn’t want a resentful husband, constantly mooning over his lost love and trying not to show it. Which is terribly decent of her. I’m not sure I could ever be quite so noble and self-sacrificing as the typical Regency heroine.

But she has a cunning plan. If she and Charles pretend to be betrothed for a while, it will make Julia jealous enough to return to Charles, and by that time Isabel’s beautiful younger sister will have achieved the expected stellar match and their father will be too pleased to be angry with Isabel. Now, there are more holes in this scheme than a sieve. I don’t know why it is, but whenever Regency characters get into a pickle, one of them is sure to say: I know, let’s pretend to be engaged! That’ll totally work! Which makes me want to bang their heads together and say: Guys, this is a terrible idea, don’t do it, OK? But they never listen.

So off they go with their fake betrothal, and of course all sorts of complications ensue, as expected. There’s a fairly dodgy subplot with a cute ingenue, who’s both naive and worldly-wise all at the same time, and the usual dastardly villain, and everything builds to a grand climax, which is good, dramatic stuff. But it’s the romance that steals the show here, and it’s my favourite sort, the slow build of two sensible and intelligent people towards their inevitable destiny. The denouement is delicious.

Niggles? Not many. Apart from a few anachronisms (a Regency hero who feels the need to ‘get out of his own head’?) and a plot that occasionally felt as if it was held together with chewing gum and string, this book was a delight. There was humour, some fun side-characters (I particularly liked gossipy plotter Mary) and a swoon-worthy hero. Isabel was a great heroine, and if her plan went a little awry, her intentions were the best, and I liked her a lot. I had some reservations about the premise and how drunken Charles would redeem himself, but the author pulled it off magnificently, so I can’t give this less than five stars. Looking forward to the next book about Isabel’s beautiful younger sister.