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This is the author\u2019s debut, a short but fun read. There\u2019s nothing earth-shatteringly original about it, but the hero and heroine are nice, likable people, the dilemma is one that must have been common in the Regency era and the writing is excellent, with a dash of humour. I enjoyed it.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the premise: Margaret (Meg) Hall, a baronet\u2019s daughter, missed her season in London because she was very ill. Now recovered, her mother wants to push forward with the desirable match that would lift the whole family up a notch, socially. She throws a house party with three eligible suitors. Meg will be expected to marry one of them – preferably the highest ranking, a viscount. Meg dutifully prepares for her fate. Meanwhile, her lifelong friend and neighbour, Nathaniel (Nathan) Blake realises that he can\u2019t wait any longer to declare his love for Meg. It\u2019s now or never!<\/p>\n
Now, the pragmatist in me wants to know why he doesn\u2019t just go straight to Meg\u2019s father and ask permission to throw his hat in the ring. But of course that would make the book about three chapters long, so naturally that doesn\u2019t happen. Nathan\u2019s mother, who is totally on his side, suggests that his first task should be to win over Lady Hall, and so that\u2019s what he does, rather than openly courting Meg. Since Lady Hall is very much against Meg marrying into the lowly Blake family, she takes every opportunity to steer him away from Meg, so he finds himself taking care of the other young ladies of the house party and watching impotently as the three official suitors circle round Meg.<\/p>\n
The three suitors are all pretty unappealing. The viscount is boring, the second one seems more interested in another young lady, and the third seems to be distinguished only by having protruding teeth. It would have been more interesting, perhaps, if they had been more rounded personalities, but since Lady Hall has already settled on the viscount as the best option, he\u2019s the one we see most of, and the other two are mere ciphers.<\/p>\n
Meg\u2019s problem is one that must have presented itself to a great many Regency young ladies – marry to oblige one\u2019s family, or wait for love to come along. Meg is a dutiful daughter who fully understands what she is expected to do, and she obediently tries to find something to spark her interest in the viscount. Meanwhile, she is realising that she might have real feelings for Nathan. If only he were one of her suitors\u2026<\/p>\n
And this is where the book falls apart for me. Nathan does, in the end, simply take the bull by the horns and talk to Sir Robert Hall about Meg, but so does the viscount, so when Meg talks to her father and hears about the viscount\u2019s proposal, she decides on the spot that she\u2019ll have him, and refuses even to hear who the other suitor is. Even when her father tries to steer her that way she doesn\u2019t want to know, and for me that\u2019s a total plot fail. There is no woman on earth who would not want to know who the second man was. This is the author spinning out an already short book to build the suspense. I really don\u2019t like that. It feels manipulative.<\/p>\n
But of course it all comes right in the end, and there are some nicely dramatic and romantic moments along the way. The author\u2019s feel for the Regency is excellent, although I\u2019m not convinced that it was commonplace for fathers to deal with proposals, accepting or rejecting them on behalf of their daughters. Asking permission to pay your addresses is one thing, but the idea that a father could simply decide on a suitor and perhaps not even tell the girl about proposals he\u2019s received on her behalf is somewhat weird to me. It\u2019s not like that in Jane Austen, and she\u2019s my ultimate authority on the subject. There are a few Americanisms, but mostly in grammar \u2014 \u2018look out the window\u2019, for instance, instead of \u2018look out of the window\u2019. Trivial things that knocked me out of immersion but wouldn\u2019t worry most readers.<\/p>\n
This is a very promising debut, not overly dramatic, but a light-hearted and enjoyable read. Only that plot logic fail keeps it to four stars for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the author\u2019s debut, a short but fun read. There\u2019s nothing earth-shatteringly original about it, but the hero and heroine are nice, likable people, the dilemma is one that must have been common in the Regency era and the writing is excellent, with a dash of humour. I enjoyed it. Here\u2019s the premise: Margaret […]<\/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":[213],"class_list":["post-3997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-thornell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997","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=3997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4001,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997\/revisions\/4001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}