{"id":1171,"date":"2018-03-17T18:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T18:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=1171"},"modified":"2018-03-17T18:00:46","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T18:00:46","slug":"review-the-difficult-life-of-a-regency-spinster-daphne-by-susan-speers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2018\/03\/17\/review-the-difficult-life-of-a-regency-spinster-daphne-by-susan-speers\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: &#8216;The Difficult Life of a Regency Spinster: Daphne&#8217; by Susan Speers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"big450Box\">\n<div class=\"big450BoxBody\">\n<div class=\"big450BoxContent\">\n<div class=\"reviewText mediumText description readable\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1502594615l\/36010427.jpg\" width=\"312\" height=\"475\" \/>This series is a real mixed bag. Abigail was delightful, Belinda a little less successful, Cecily a powerful and absorbing read. But this one is just dull. The focus is a children\u2019s Nativity play, there are a couple of nasty characters with no redeeming qualities, and a hero who\u2019s just a very nice man. The heroine doesn\u2019t show much character, either, and absolutely nothing of interest happens. The slowness isn\u2019t helped by dialogue that covers every word spoken between the characters.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the plot, such as it is: Daphne (who\u2019s supposed to be a chatterbox but we never really hear this) lives in genteel poverty with her elderly aunts. She\u2019s courted by retired sea-dog Captain Palfrey and a cousin, clergyman Gideon Spicer. The clergyman is resolutely dogmatic in insisting that she marry him, and I longed to box his ears every time he refused to take no for an answer. Daphne was far more restrained in her refusals than I would have been. There are some struggles with money issues and a problem for Captain Palfrey which Daphne gets involved with and that\u2019s about it, really.<\/p>\n<p>There are fewer editing issues in this book than in books 2 and 3 in the series, but there are still far too many punctuation errors and one or two sentences that just made no sense. There are some implausibilities in the plot, too. Even so, I still enjoyed the romance, and especially the ending which was very satisfactory. Three stars. I\u2019ve already downloaded Edwina and Felicity, so I\u2019ll probably read on and hope for better fortune.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This series is a real mixed bag. Abigail was delightful, Belinda a little less successful, Cecily a powerful and absorbing read. But this one is just dull. The focus is a children\u2019s Nativity play, there are a couple of nasty characters with no redeeming qualities, and a hero who\u2019s just a very nice man. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[93],"class_list":["post-1171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-speers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1173,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171\/revisions\/1173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}