Another fascinating and refreshingly different tale from this author, who never fails to surprise. Not for her the well-worn tracks of Regency tropes leading to the predictable conclusions. Every book is a unique read, and while some are more absorbing than others, I’ll read anything she writes.

Here’s the premise: Kate Carteret has been left in an awkward position by the untimely death of her sister and brother-in-law, leaving behind four small children. A kindly (but not that kindly) relation lets them have a cottage on his Sussex estate at a peppercorn rent, but Kate must earn a living to support them. Her cousin Bella is left in charge on the domestic front, while Kate goes to London, initially as a companion to an elderly lady, but when that falls through, as a singer on stage, since she has a magnificent singing voice. But then Bella elopes with a naval officer, and Kate has to return to the village of Fairlea to take charge of the children. Conveniently, her theatre is closing for the summer anyway, so she has several months to rescue the situation and decide how to look after the children in the future.

I have to confess, this is one of the more implausible openings I’ve come across. Kate’s musical talent is unsuspected, even by her family, since she was never allowed to sing ‘forcefully’, and her identity was successfully concealed on stage by make-up and a wig. This leaves her able to return to Fairlea as just another impoverished spinster. Meanwhile, two of the admirers of her operatic persona in London now appear in the neighbourhood, Sir Anthony Chiswick and Lord Maule. Sir Anthony merely gave her flowers, but Lord Maule has been pressing her to become his mistress. Yet somehow neither of them recognise her.

There’s a lot of potential here for conflict, especially with Lord Maule, but somehow the author shies away from that. Instead, she throws an enormous cast of peripheral characters into the mix. Sir Anthony’s unhappy sister-in-law. The vicar’s pushy and spiteful daughter. Lady Plum and her five unmarriageable daughters, together with an appropriate number of potential suitors. And one couple I was delighted to see – Hervey and ‘Fliss’ from ‘Felicity’, now happily married with a brood of their own.

All of this generates a surprisingly conventional Regency, with invitations for Kate to al fresco breakfasts, dinners and even a ball, with the usual romantic interludes. The main romance, between Kate and Sir Anthony, proceeds slowly but inexorably to its rather low-key conclusion. Although Kate dithers about whether she’s suitable marriage material, or whether he’ll walk away when he hears about her stage performances, somehow none of it ever comes to much more than her own inner thoughts. I would have liked at least one confrontation between them, at least. As it is, the road seems a little too smooth.

The real interest in the book for me is with some of the peripheral characters. The unhappy Lady Sybil is one whose story could have been a little deeper, and less easily resolved. The friend Iris, another respectable gentlewoman reduced to earning her living, was another I’d like to have seen more of. And then there were the two most fascinating characters in the book, the livewire youngest of the Plum brood, Gracie, and the seemingly unreformed rake with the surprisingly complex back story, Lord Maule. A whole book on those two wouldn’t go amiss. Lord Maule’s actions at the very end took me completely by surprise (and that’s a good thing – I love to be surprised!).

Overall, this isn’t one of Speers’ best outings, and the romance was far too flat to be interesting, but the glimpses of more intriguing stories amongst the walk-on parts brings this up to four stars. And now on to L.

A difficult one for me to rate. I’m a huge fan of Susan Speers, who is one of the most original Regency authors around. I never quite know what she’ll come up with next, and I love that uncertainty. But it does mean that her books are quite hit or miss with me. This one was more miss than hit, but still an intriguing read.

Here’s the premise: Lady Jane Wilverhampton is living a retired life with her godmother in Scotland, trying to escape the misery of an almost-betrothal that went wrong and family scandal. But when she’s invited to a house party, she meets again the man who broke her heart a number of years ago, when he married someone else. It wasn’t from choice – the two were caught alone in the library together and forced to marry. Now she’s dead, and Angus Killoran is free again, but Jane has made a vow never to marry. Her father and younger brother were both tainted by a kind of madness, and she won’t pass on that bad blood to another generation. But Angus has a younger brother, Fergus, who is supposed to be wooing the daughter of their hosts, a beautiful heiress who will restore the Killoran fortunes. Unfortunately, Fergus has taken a shine to Jane…

The characters here have an awful lot of history. There’s the halcyon days of Jane and Angus’s courtship in France. The misery of his entrapment, forcing him to marry. There’s his wife’s death in a fire, partially destroying the family home. Then there is Jane’s father, and his cruelty to her mother and to the children. Jane’s younger brother has committed murder, although we never hear much about that, and he’s living abroad. And finally, Jane’s older brother, who also vowed never to marry, has broken that vow and is expecting his first child. All of this is revealed piecemeal in flashbacks, which gives the book a disjointed feel.

There are numerous side characters, none of whom are ever brought to the front of the stage so that we can get to know them properly. They simply flit about, moving into Jane’s view and then out again, easily forgotten. I would have liked to know more about the heiress, for instance, and also about young Catriona and her brother. What was the point of them in this story? I have no idea.

As for Angus and Fergus, I never really understood what they were thinking or feeling, or why they didn’t sit down together and talk openly about Jane. It seemed as though they simply drifted about in a helpless, purposeless way. And then there was Jane herself. What did she feel? Where was the emotion? Sometimes she cried and paced about impatiently, but I can’t say that any of the intense feelings she ought to be (and was!) experiencing came across to me. A lot of this was frustrating to me. I’m not a huge fan of angsty heroines, but with the sort of tragedies sweeping through Jane’s life, I wanted to feel her pain more intensely than I did.

If this sounds negative, it’s because there is an unusual and powerful story here that struggled to escape the unemotional tone of the writing. Perhaps other readers can fill in the gaps between what was written and what was beneath the surface, but I found it too difficult. There were moments when the emotion reached me, but mostly it was submerged. The writing was also marred by proofreading errors, with a lot of wayward punctuation, and a few anachronisms (no teddy bears in the Regency, for example). Speers has written some amazing books, but this one was an interesting read that just didn’t quite work for me. I still recommend it, and the whole series, for anyone who’s tired of the usual Regency tropes. Three stars.

Finally! After five books in the series where the author’s talent almost shone through but was drowned out by misfiring plots, a scattergun approach to punctuation and (in one case) sheer dullness, here she gets everything right. Fascinating characters, an engrossing story, a villain unmasked and a heart-warming romance – this one works on all fronts, and the editing is excellent, too.

Here’s the premise: Felicity Debenham has been passed from one distant relation to another, and given the most desperate jobs, treated with contempt, cheated of her pay and accused of stealing. Cast out on the streets with no other recourse, she turns to an old friend who now runs an employment agency. But it isn’t the sort of agency that supplies respectable maids, companions and governesses, and Felicity is forced to consider learning a new, and less respectable, trade.

She’s rescued by a most unlikely circumstance. Hervey Godbold is looking for female companionship to bring some cheer to the last Christmas of his dying friend, Laurence Dashiell. Unable to find any respectable woman willing to travel north with him, he’s forced to try less reputable sources. Felicity, of course, is happy to help, and so these two set off on their journey together.

Hervey is a most unusual hero for any romance, for he’s a big, blundering sort of guy, not terribly bright but good hearted, and very gentle with Felicity, treating her with the utmost respect, even though he’s effectively paid for her services as a whore. Laurence, Hervey’s soldier friend who’s dying from his wounds, is another gentle soul. He calls Felicity ‘Happiness’, and Hervey calls her ‘Fliss’, and I loved both names for her, which spoke volumes about the two men. Of course, there’s a villain, Laurence’s cousin Dart, who is only waiting for Laurence to die to take over his estate. And he’s been defrauding Laurence, somehow, but no one can quite work out how.

There’s never any doubt as to how things will turn out, and if I have a complaint at all about these books, it’s that the characters fall too rigidly into the good or bad side. There are no shades of grey here, only black and white. But the story is lovely, the romance is charming and the few sex scenes are appropriate and unusually realistic for the genre (by which I mean that the heroine doesn’t fall into instant ecstasy the moment she gets her kit off).

The whole series is interesting, but this one excels. Highly recommended for anyone looking for something different from the usual unfeasibly handsome dukes behaving badly and improbably beautiful but wilfully independent young ladies. Five stars. And now the wait begins for Miss G. Gladys? Gertrude? Gillian?

The enjoyable aspect of a series like this is that every book is different. It’s like a box of chocolates where you don’t know until you try it whether you’ve got the strawberry cream or the caramel or the nutty one. I loved Abigail, was ho-hum about Belinda and now Cecily is perhaps the strongest story yet. But be warned – for sensitive souls, it’s a bit of a weepy.

Here’s the plot: Cecily has endured some heartbreaking years, but at last she’s found a sanctuary of sorts in the small seaside village of Daggers Bay, acting as companion to the invalid daughter of a neighbouring family. But then into this quiet life comes a man from her past – Lord Hawley, heir to an earldom.

I’m not going to spoil the read by revealing too much of what follows, but suffice it to say that both characters have to learn to live with and accept the past, and change enough to have a future together. These are two strong-minded people who share an unbreakable bond of love, and I wept buckets as they gradually came to their happy ever after. A great love story. There is a sex scene, but it’s nicely done and felt in character.

There are some fine minor characters, too, especially Laurel, the invalid, and I think we’ve met the Daphne of the next book. There are a few caricatures, too, especially amongst the villainous characters, and I do think Carlton was way too easy on his mother – I’d have been spitting fire about it. The historical accuracy level is high, although Viscount Hawley would always be addressed as Lord Hawley, and never as Viscount. Dukes are the only nobles ever addressed by their rank.

So why only four stars? It’s because the editing is terrible. Speech marks are left out here, there and everywhere, there are extra or missing words, there’s confusion over lie and lay, and Laurel becomes Lauren at one point. And if the author could have brought herself to use the past perfect tense (using ‘had’) many passages would have been greatly improved. It’s such a shame, because the book is well-written and emotionally very powerful, but such sloppiness lets it down badly. Four stars and on to Daphne.

I loved the first book in this series, Abigail, and immediately plunged into this one, which featured one of the intriguing side characters from the first book. Sadly, it is nothing like as resounding a success as the first one. Large parts of the plot are, not to put too fine a point on it, a hot mess.

Here’s the premise: Belinda is the epitome of a poor relation. She’s passed around from one branch of the family to another, as she might be useful. Eventually, she washes up in London, at the home of elderly Millicent Anstruther, to whom Belinda is to act as companion. Millicent, we are given to understand, is a dragon, who chews up companions and spits them out.

And here is the first of several problems. Millicent is a little brusque, but she’s never less than kind to Belinda. She gives her light secretarial duties, fits her out in stylish clothes and takes her along to every grand society event. The hostile person in the family is Millicent’s niece Fleur, who fits neatly into the spoilt, wilful but beautiful debutante category. She treats Belinda as a servant and is unfailingly rude to her. Millicent, the supposed dragon, ticks her off for these insults, of course, pointing out that Belinda is family.

The central plot revolves around a collection of archaeological artifacts, which Fleur and scholar Edward Fortescue, a friend of Belinda’s from book 1, are cataloguing. This is where everything unravels, because very little of this made much sense to me. I found it impossible to believe that the honour of the family hinged entirely on the collection, and there were so many coincidences and lucky breaks as to defy credibility. I’m still not sure who set the fires, or what became of the visits to His Grace and the Earl, which Millicent’s brothers were to undertake. Nor could I believe for one moment that spoilt, selfish Fleur, surrounded by titled suitors, would run away with a penniless man. Hot mess, the whole lot of it.

And here’s a complaint that I don’t often have to make these days — this book was riddled with typos. Not so much spelling errors, but missing or extraneous words, poor punctuation and even a wrong name (Millicent is called Mildred at one point). This is so disappointing, because the first book was very much cleaner in this respect, and it’s so sad when a fine writer’s work is let down in this way.

But the main romance was lovely. The hero was a delightful character that I was rooting for all the way, Belinda’s growing feelings were perfectly understandable and the misunderstandings between them actually made some sense. All their scenes shimmered with romantic fairy dust, even when Belinda herself wasn’t aware of it, there was no gratuitous sex scene this time (unlike the first book), and the ending was delightful. So, despite the hot mess (which may just be my brain not working well) and the typos, I’m going to give this three stars and hope for better in book 3, Cecily.