Another winner from Joan Smith, with a charming heroine, an initially grumpy but soon melting hero, some amusingly horse-mad minor characters and a creative ending.

Here’s the premise: eligible Lord Southam is betrothed to manipulative Deborah Swann, but the marriage is being delayed by his eldest half sister, Gillian, who cordially dislikes Deborah, and the feeling is mutual. Deborah has sworn she won’t marry Southam until Gillie is safely married and out of the house. But where to send her? The girl’s head is full of horses and not much else, she’s too gauche to be set loose on the London marriage mart and there are no suitable relatives. But there’s the widow of Southam’s cousin, Beatrice Searle, who lives in Bath, and is also an old school friend of Deborah’s. She would do, and it would get Gillie out of the house for a few weeks. After all, what can she possibly get up to in Bath?

Bea Searle is delighted with the idea. She remembers Lord Southam very well, since he flirted with her outrageously at her own wedding, knows that he’s not yet married and sees a perfect opportunity to weigh up the possibility of a second, and very agreeable, husband. She’s very put out when it’s not Southam himself who brings Gillie to Bath, only her former governess, Miss Pittfield. For a while, she lets her peevishness sour her relationship with Gillie, but she soon sees that the girl is homesick and in need of some gentle mothering, and her sympathies are aroused.

After this, they get along swimmingly, as Bea introduces Gillie to her horsiest acquaintances, manages to smarten her up a little and takes her off for some gentle evening entertainments. But Southam is concerned by the seemingly raffish nature of Gillie’s new horsey friends, and decides to drive to Bath to take a look at them, and this is where the book really takes off. Bea and Southam, after a chilly start, soon rediscover the fun of flirtation, the raffish friends turn out to be a duke and his uncle, and Southam starts to make unfavourable comparisons with his future wife. Deborah’s managing ways are not nearly so agreeable as Bea’s lively, not to say welcoming, nature.

Once the project to marry Gillie to the equally horse-mad duke gets underway, there’s a trip to Bournemouth, where Southam makes the mistake of a heavy-handed nocturnal approach to Bea, and gets the sharp end of her Irish temper. Happily, he’s too far along the road to being in love with her to let things stand, so the story becomes the familiar one: how to escape his now unwanted betrothal to Deborah? I have to say, Southam’s methods are ingenious.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read, despite a number of anachronisms and Americanisms. The banter between Bea and Southam is delightful, Gillie and her duke are great fun, and even Miss Pittfield is given a spirited personality. As ‘villains’ go, Deborah is as entertaining as they come, and no doubt she’ll find some other muggins to manipulate into marriage. A great read. Five stars.

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.

My second Joan Smith on the trot and I’m finding that my palate soon becomes jaded. They are very samey, and for those looking solely for the froth of a light-hearted Heyer-esque romp, this is just the ticket, but after a while I begin to long for a bit of character development. In this one, the misunderstandings all became a bit too tangled and I just wanted it all to stop.

Here’s the premise: Lucy Percy was almost taken in by a fortune hunter during the season in London. To allow herself time to recover, she and her aunt rent a cottage in the countryside. To deter unwanted suitors, Lucy pretends to be married and her widowed aunt pretends to be a spinster, and of course this is going to lead to huge problems. It so happens that the cottage is owned by a baron, Lord Bigelow, who decides that Lucy is just his sort of lady – what a pity she’s married. She instantly decides that being married is a hindrance to her ultimate objective, which is to find a husband of the non-fortune-hunting variety, so she summarily bumps off her supposed husband and makes herself a widow. Lord Bigelow is thrilled, and thinks it’s just a misunderstanding that he thought her husband was alive.

Meanwhile, Lord Bigelow’s uncle, the Earl of Avedon, is much more suspicious, and thinks Lucy is herself a fortune hunter. He’s a bit confused, because both she and the aunt are clearly well-bred, but he’s quite sure she’s a retired courtesan or actress, out to snabble a rich husband. He sets out on a campaign to get rid of Lucy and her aunt by forcing them out of the cottage. Being the principal landowner in the district, he decides to do some road ‘improvements’ around their cottage, effectively cutting them off from food supplies and company. Lucy isn’t about to surrender so tamely, however, so she and her aunt ingeniously work around the problem (and frankly, it’s hard to see how digging up the road would stop the butcher’s boy, say, from walking over the fields to deliver their leg of lamb; everybody walked everywhere in those days).

And so it goes on, the two of them fighting tooth and nail, she always having the upper hand and he, the prim and proper gentleman, finally unravelling in spectacular style. As always with Joan Smith, the romance takes a back seat to all the banter and shenanigans, and there isn’t even a particularly romantic denouement at the end. And as I mentioned before, the whole thing became tediously complicated. I eventually gave up trying to work out who knew what, and whether it was true or not. It was just too much work. Lots of fun between the complications, though, and although it wasn’t altogether to my taste, I enjoyed it well enough for four stars.

This was a barrel of laughs, and although the hero and heroine get themselves into a rare old muddle through sheer stupidity, and some of the characters are a bit over the top, it’s all so funny that it doesn’t really matter.

Here’s the premise: Samantha Bright has been buried in the country her whole life, and has reached the ripe old age of twenty-six without finding a husband. Part of the problem is that she’s been in love with her neighbour Lord Monteith for years, even though he treats her with negligent familiarity, calling her his country flirt – when he’s even at home, that is, which isn’t often. One day Monteith will marry, he supposes, but not yet, and until then he’s enjoying himself thoroughly, while Sam is languishing into spinsterhood. But into this stasis comes Monteith’s uncle, Lord Howard, who returns home from India with a million pounds in his pocket, determined to marry and sets his sights on Sam. Which of course serves to focus Monteith’s attention properly on her for the first time.

From here on, the plot follows a fairly predictable path. There are some side distractions, like Mrs Armstrong, the retired courtesan that Howard wants to set up as his mistress, but she’s angling for marriage, and Clifford Sutton, the low-key friend and possible suitor of Monteith’s mother, who is herself a central character, constantly manipulating everyone around her in the most outrageous fashion. But Lord Howard is the character who dominates the stage in every scene, completely upstaging the two principals, who seem drab and spiritless by comparison.

I confess to being puzzled by the titles. It’s never mentioned what Monteith’s exact rank is, but since his uncle is Lord Howard, he can only be a duke or a marquess, and since nobody your-graces him, he must be a marquess. Which is pretty high up the pecking order, but no one ever refers to it, or treats the family with the sort of deference that a marquessate would usually engender. Nothing wrong with that, it just struck me as odd. There was one historical misstep – not impossible but something that would have been frowned upon. I don’t want to be too spoilerish, so I’ll just say – marriage to deceased wife’s sister.

This is not the book to read if you want deep character development or oodles of angst, with emotion spilt all over the page. It’s written in the classic tradition of Heyer-esque Regency romps, all froth and silliness, no unseemly lusting, and the headline romance is wrapped up on the last page with the hero sweeping the heroine into his manly arms for a thorough kissing. Although to be fair, there is a sort of an epilogue here.

It’s also not the book to read if you’re a stickler for period-accuracy language, and don’t get me started on the punctuation. If this book has ever seen a proofreader, he or she should be fired immediately. Much of it reads as if it was transcribed from a printed version by optical character recognition, and then simply published. Not good enough. But it’s very funny, and I can forgive a book a great deal if it makes me laugh. The conversations between Sam and Monty, especially in the beginning, before he gets all grumpy and jealous, are hilarious. But there are just too many misunderstandings, and too many errors to give it more than four stars.

This is not the book for anyone who is a stickler for historical language or plot plausibility. It is, however, wildly funny, and although I rolled my eyes at something or other on every third page, along would come another laugh out loud moment, and so I just kept on reading. It’s outrageously silly, but it doesn’t matter a bit.

Here’s the premise (such as it is): Lizzie Bladen and her Aunt Maisie are struggling to keep their heads above water at their impoverished and heavily mortgaged family home, while Lizzie’s younger brother Jeremy is away at Oxford. Lizzie decides she’ll have to sell her dowry, a historic and valuable diamond necklace. On route to her uncle, who has offered to buy it, their carriage is overturned by a fast-driving baronet, Sir Edmund Blount, and in the confusion the necklace is stolen. Lizzie and Edmund are at odds instantly, but he chivalrously decides to help them recover the necklace, and thereby sets in train a glorious sequence of ever more unlikely escapades as they chase around the country in pursuit of a wall-eyed man in a green coat who is the chief suspect.

So far, so promising, but the real fly in the ointment for me was that the book I read immediately before this was another Joan Smith effort, called Love’s Way. And here’s the kicker – its plot is almost identical to this one. The heroine (and her aunt!) are in dire financial straits, thrown together with an antagonistic hero with whom the heroine feuds in melodramatic fashion throughout the book. And although this book at least has some indication that the hero is actually falling for the heroine, she never admits to it, and (just like the previous book) there’s no romantic ending just a shrug and I-suppose-we’d-better-get-married air of resignation. So although I enjoyed the whole thing quite a lot, it was rather spoilt for me by the repetition.

There is one element of the story that I found very funny, but purists might take exception to. Sir Edmund, having been a contented bachelor for a number of years, and having no intention ever to marry, has developed the habit of seeking out female company of a certain type when he’s travelling. He doesn’t stray from the moral code when he’s at home where he’s a respectable figure and wants to keep his reputation, but when he’s away from home he likes a bit of how’s-your-father. This leads to some very funny moments when he’s trying to arrange something, or is actually about to embark upon it, when Lizzie interrupts. Naturally, he gets quite cross about this.

In fact, Edmund’s moods are one of the most entertaining aspects of the book, for they veer about quite dramatically in response to whatever is going forward, and whether he sees it as positive or negative, and although Aunt Maisie soon sees what he’s about, Lizzie never does, and fails to notice that Edmund’s moods are increasingly concerned with her attitude to him.

It’s all great fun, despite being ridiculously implausible, but the sense of deja vu keeps it to four stars for me.

This was a complete riot. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but oh boy, was it funny! The hero and heroine were at odds throughout the book, so they threw everything at each other, verbally, and it was glorious.

Here’s the premise: Chloe Barwick is struggling to manage the run-down family estate since her younger brother, Edward, who should be in charge, is obsessed with becoming a poet instead. While he is dreaming up lurid verses and hobnobbing with the Lake District’s resident poets, she’s left to cope with making the sheep raising pay, and trying to scrape together enough money to pay the mortgage every quarter. Aunt Nora, who lives with them, isn’t much help, either. The neighbours, drunken Lord Carnforth and his seemingly innocent daughter Emily are even worse off, living in absolute squalor. So when Emily starts calling on a daily basis and hanging around the interesting Edward, a marriage is out of the question. Edward must marry money to rescue the estate. Chloe herself could rescue them, of course, if only she’d marry Tom Carrick and his five thousand a year. It’s a pity she can’t stand him.

Into this stasis appears the explosive person of Jack Gamble, Lord Carnforth’s nephew, the traditional black sheep, so beloved of Regencies, who’s just returned from India with a fortune in his pocket (another very traditional trope). He immediately sets up Chloe’s back by frightening Emily into running away to Chloe and Edward’s house, from where Jack, in a towering rage, removes her, sets her up with a chaperone and sets about turning her into a pampered rich lady. She seems to enjoy the attention and he seems to be seriously wooing her, and even offers for her, before beginning to discover that behind the barbed tongue, Chloe has a lot of sterling qualities and is far more interesting than ingenue Emily.

This sets up a nice merry-go-round of romances. Will Emily accept Jack’s offer? Will Edward care if she does? Will Chloe see the good in Jack or end up with uninteresting Tom Carrick and his five thousand pounds? The book is a vintage era Regency, so the romance is desperately short on emotion (I don’t think the hero and heroine ever actually come out and say they love each other). Instead, it’s high on the froth of banter and light-heartedly swapping from one potential mate to another, almost as if it doesn’t quite matter. And when they decide that, no, they won’t marry that person after all, it’s a simple matter of saying so. This is not consistent with any Regency code of conduct that I know.

In the background is the villain of the piece, who, in a light-hearted and jovial way, is determined to turn this corner of the Lake District into a vulgar theme park, with every possible tasteless attraction. The Barwick’s house is so run-down that he thinks he’ll just buy it when they inevitably default on the mortgage, knock it down and build a road through it. This part of the story wasn’t so interesting that I wanted to read every last detail of the plans, but it was definitely more interesting than the endless descriptions of the scenery and how to run a sheep farm. All this might have been more convincing without the mention of skunks harassing the sheep and cardinals singing melodically in the beech tree. Nor was I impressed by Edward deciding to organise a fox hunt in the middle of summer (I’m sure the farmers would be thrilled to have the hunt rampaging through their fields and trampling crops and scaring the sheep – save it for the winter months, please).

But you know, none of this mattered tuppence, because the book is *funny*. It’s written in first person for Chloe (‘I went…’ instead of ‘she went…’), and that means the reader is right inside Chloe’s gloriously witty, curmudgeonly and downright cynical head. It’s wonderful stuff, and if I would have liked a little bit less of the theme park villainy and a little more emotion, I can accept that the book is very much of its era, where the characters are slightly cartoonish and not the fully rounded type we expect nowadays. Despite the skunks and cardinals, the sheer enjoyment of the banter makes this a five star read for me.

This is one of those rollicking, lighthearted Regency romps that requires the reader to leave absolutely all rational thought in a cupboard somewhere and simply roll with it. Sometimes, if the characters are charming enough I can do that, but there was just too much unlikability here for me to manage it.

Here’s the premise: Jane Halsey and sister Belle are living in near destitution with an aunt in an obscure corner of London. The only way to rescue themselves from ever-worsening poverty is for one of them to marry a rich husband, but how can they ever meet a likely candidate, when they know no one and go nowhere? But one day, they have a stroke of luck – they attract the attention of bonkers Lord Romeo, the younger son of a duke, who’s grown up in Greece and become enamoured of all things Greek. He spies Jane and immediately recognises her as Athene, and wants to paint her, naked if possible, and then marry her.

Jane has no interest in Romeo for herself, but he’d suit Belle perfectly, so the sisters fall in with Romeo’s plans. But along with Romeo comes his big brother, the Marquis of Renfrew and heir to the dukedom, who thinks clever, managing Jane is just the wife to keep Romeo under control. He tags along to encourage Romeo’s suit, but ends up attracting the attention of Jane herself, who thinks he’s pursuing her.

Now, this is where I lost patience with our heroine. Jane’s supposed to be a smart cookie, but why on earth does she imagine for one moment that she, the daughter of a mere baronet, currently homeless and virtually dowerless, would be the object of a future duke? She casually calls him Renfrew, as if she’d known him all her life, assuming he’ll dance with her and being thoroughly presumptuous and encroaching and obnoxious. Knowing that Romeo has set his sights on her, she must surely see that his brother can hardly be courting her as well. So I disliked her pretty thoroughly at this point, and cringed every time she made another assumption.

As for Renfrew, even though he suspects that she’s forming an attachment to him, he does nothing about it, and certainly fails to convey to her that his only interest is in fostering Romeo’s suit. He convinces himself he’s mistaken, and carries on quietly falling in love with her himself. And then things get even sillier, and build to one of the most ridiculous finales I’ve ever read.

Now, this wasn’t a bad read, exactly. It’s as well written as Joan Smith’s books always are, and there are certainly moments of laugh-out-loud fun. But the oddball charm of Romeo in Babe palls in its repetition here, where his oblivious straightforwardness turns into something much more devious, the main pairing of Jane and Renfrew entirely lack charm, the humour of comedy sidekick Munch fell flat and the ending was just too unbelievable. Joan Smith is always a bit hit or miss for me, and this one was definitely a miss. Not unreadable, but only three stars. If you like the sound of Romeo, read Babe instead, a much more fun book.