{"id":2433,"date":"2020-02-21T16:30:09","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T16:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=2433"},"modified":"2021-09-01T09:54:08","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T09:54:08","slug":"review-katherine-by-jenny-hambly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2020\/02\/21\/review-katherine-by-jenny-hambly\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Katherine by Jenny Hambly [Trad]"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\"\"This is the third book by this author, and it\u2019s another assured and enjoyable read. Heroine Katherine is a calm and sensible woman, and hero Harry is an irrepressible rogue, and if this is a little more conventional an outing than Rosalind and Sophie, that\u2019s not a problem in the slightest.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: Katherine\u2019s brother, for whom she\u2019s kept house for several years, has recently married and Katherine\u2019s feeling a bit in the way of her rather crotchety and newly pregnant sister-in-law. She accepts her brother\u2019s commission to travel to a neglected part of his estate to restore it to order. The house, Helagon in Cornwall, is not quite falling down, but needs more work than she\u2019d foreseen. A tricky problem. Meanwhile, wild boy Harry, Viscount Treleven, has returned to his former home after five years in exile, determined to be a good landlord and settle down just a little. Needless to say, these two find themselves unwilling and somewhat antagonistic neighbours\u2026<\/p>\n

I liked Katherine very much. Her awkward position, having her role as mistress of the house usurped by the new wife, who naturally wants everything her own way, must have been a very common one in Regency times, and most women didn\u2019t have the option of another estate to run away to. Most such women would have simply dwindled away to become the poor relation, or else hastily accepted the first suitable offer, so Katherine is lucky to avoid those fates, but her position is still a difficult one. Even when Helagon is fully restored, it would be considered quite odd for a single woman to live there, even with a companion for respectability. But Katherine doesn\u2019t dwell on her future, throwing herself into the business of renovation with practical spirit, as with everything. Her first meeting with Harry is very much in that vein, after he has seemingly been shot by a poacher and she briskly deals with his injury.<\/p>\n

Harry isn\u2019t quite the lighthearted flirt he appeared to be in the previous book, where his humour lightened the tone considerably. That\u2019s inevitable, perhaps, in the book where he meets his match and the roguishness has to give way to more serious considerations. There\u2019s also his duties as landlord, especially one who\u2019s been absent for some years, to weigh him down, and a neighbour who isn\u2019t as friendly as he might be. However, I did miss the lightness just a little.<\/p>\n

Of the side characters, I particularly liked Harry\u2019s younger sister Henrietta, painfully shy and recovering from a not very enjoyable London season. Katherine\u2019s advice on the proper management of flirtatious comments was one of the highlights of the book. Lord and Lady Hayward were fun characters, too. The villain is dealt with with suitable panache.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing terribly unexpected in the way the story unravelled, but it was a fine read nevertheless, and I liked Harry\u2019s scruples at the end – realising that his history as a flirt meant that he had to be absolutely sure of his own mind before speaking. A good four stars.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the third book by this author, and it\u2019s another assured and enjoyable read. Heroine Katherine is a calm and sensible woman, and hero Harry is an irrepressible rogue, and if this is a little more conventional an outing than Rosalind and Sophie, that\u2019s not a problem in the slightest. Here\u2019s the premise: Katherine\u2019s […]<\/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":[127],"class_list":["post-2433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-hambly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433","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=2433"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3833,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions\/3833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}