{"id":4665,"date":"2022-12-16T17:24:24","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T17:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=4665"},"modified":"2022-12-16T17:24:24","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T17:24:24","slug":"a-fickle-fortune-by-christina-dudley-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/12\/16\/a-fickle-fortune-by-christina-dudley-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fickle Fortune by Christina Dudley (2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"After the slightly flat story of Edith and Lionel in A Purloined Portrait, this is an absolute cracker. Hetty in London is a delight. As is inevitable with any Regency novel set during the London season, there are well-worn paths to tread and over-used tropes to drive the plot, but Hetty and her swain are so gloriously different, and the background characters so fascinating, that it\u2019s easy to overlook.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: in the last book, Hetty\u2019s machinations secured the engagement of her cousin and brother, but left another cousin, Caroline, without a betrothal. Caroline is to have a season in London, and when Hetty is invited to join her, she sees a way to repay Caroline for her previous bad turn and help her to find a husband. Caroline sets her sights on the season\u2019s glittering prize, Mr St John Rotherwood, newly wealthy and formerly a tutor of Hetty\u2019s brother Lionel at Oxford. Hetty has an instant advantage over every other young lady – she knows the prize already, so she determines to use her advantage to Caroline\u2019s benefit. But Mr Rotherwood is a scientist and intellectual, and Caroline is (frankly) an air-head. Instead, it\u2019s curious, avid reader Hetty who has most to say to Mr Rotherwood.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t suit Caroline, but it also doesn\u2019t suit Mr Rotherwood\u2019s mother, Anne, who suffered for years as the outcast of the family for marrying beneath her, and is now determined to resume her place in society and see her son marry as befits his new position. You\u2019d imagine she would be sympathetic to her son\u2019s growing love for Hetty and want him to choose with his heart, as she did, but no. All the resentments of the years, and her pride in being a baronet\u2019s daughter, combine to make her ambitious for her son. A duke\u2019s daughter is perhaps beyond his grasp, but there\u2019s the very beautiful, if vapid, Lady Sylvia, an earl\u2019s daughter\u2026<\/p>\n

Poor Mr Rotherwood is caught in the middle of these machinations. He hates the emptiness of the social whirl, and would far rather get to know the intriguing Miss Hetty Hapgood, who at least has a brain in her head, but he also wants to make his mother proud of him. It\u2019s a dilemma. And just at this point, a huge scandal erupts around Hetty, and Mr Rotherwood steps forward to save her from condemnation. And so we get into the very traditional trope of the enforced betrothal, which the two protagonists arrange between themselves rather ingeniously.<\/p>\n

This might have been a predictable tale, but Dudley eschews the well-worn paths of innumerable other authors, and imbues her characters with creative minds and real emotions. Hetty, in particular, is a wonderful character, always brimming with original ways to solve problems, her own or other people\u2019s, and I was thrilled to bits when she finally snatched her own happy ending from seeming defeat. Mr Rotherwood makes a terrific hero, too, and even his mother, who seemed to be an obstacle for most of the book, softened considerably in the end.<\/p>\n

I am so sorry to reach the end of this glorious series, although happily the author is already writing a new series, with another delightfully quirky family to enjoy. Christina Dudley is one of my absolute favourite authors, without a single dud in her catalogue. This one is another five star read for me, but I commend every one of her books to anyone who wants an original, literate and downright charming Regency.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the slightly flat story of Edith and Lionel in A Purloined Portrait, this is an absolute cracker. Hetty in London is a delight. As is inevitable with any Regency novel set during the London season, there are well-worn paths to tread and over-used tropes to drive the plot, but Hetty and her swain are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[187],"class_list":["post-4665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-dudley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665","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=4665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4669,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665\/revisions\/4669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}