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A nice traditional read, and mostly set in Bath, which is always fun. Very redolent of Georgette Heyer, but that\u2019s not at all a bad thing.<\/p>\nA nice traditional read, and mostly set in Bath, which is always fun. Very redolent of Georgette Heyer, but that\u2019s not at all a bad thing.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the premise: Julian Aldwyn is the heir to an earldom, and after a sudden illness in his father, he\u2019s realised it\u2019s time for him to marry and secure the succession. The trouble is, a disastrous and humiliating love affair before he was even of age has made him wary of women. He wants a restful marriage with the conformable wife of the title, based on compatibility not romantic foolishness. His sister suggests the perfect candidate – Henrietta (Hetty) Melville, very much on the shelf after devoting herself to her family, but very capable. So Julian gets to know her, and although she\u2019s a terrible dowd, he sees enough in her to make her an offer – which she refuses, because she\u2019s still hoping for a love match.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s piqued by her refusal, but she\u2019s a bit put out, too, by his unemotional proposal. When an opportunity arises for her to go to Bath to stay with an old friend and have a bit of a girly good time, away she goes, happy to leave the annoying Mr Aldwyn behind. In Bath, she has the makeover so beloved of Regencies, emerging as a beautiful and fashionable woman, and attracting a whole host of admirers. So when Mr Aldwyn finally gets up the gumption to follow her to Bath, to see if maybe he can\u2019t persuade her to change her mind, he finds the dull and dowdy spinster has become a social butterfly, amusing herself with flirtations with her many admirers.<\/p>\n
I do dislike the idea that a woman has only to put on a pretty gown and have a new hairdo to become beautiful. Her face and figure haven\u2019t changed, after all, and a plain woman can\u2019t be made less plain by dressing differently, especially not in an era when make-up was little worn. And if a so-called hero *thinks* she\u2019s become beautiful because of some new frocks, he doesn\u2019t deserve her.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t go into the details of all Hetty\u2019s admirers. There were far too many characters in this book, by the time all her friends and relations are taken into account, and most of them were unnecessary and only served to make the book longer and more complicated than it needed to be. There\u2019s a villain, needless to say, with whom Hetty behaves very stupidly and puts herself at obvious risk, and there\u2019s a not-very-challenging mystery to resolve, and a happy ending for one of the minor characters, when an obstacle is rather predictably removed at the last minute.<\/p>\n
Some reviews are quite hard on Hetty and Julian, but I rather liked both of them. They both had some baggage to dispose of before they could commit to marriage, she to spread her wings a little after so many years playing the dutiful daughter and sister, and he to realise that not all women are deceitful hussies and that it\u2019s possible to fall in love twice. As for the romance, again, some reviews are negative, saying it comes out of nowhere. Well, it\u2019s not a full-on angsty and over emotional affair, that\u2019s true, but that wasn\u2019t the norm for this era – it\u2019s getting on for fifty years old, after all. But there are clues all the way through that both the protagonists are regretting their initial haste, he to rush to propose without trying to win her over, and she to reject him out of hand. In particular, their behaviour in Bath shows very clearly what\u2019s going on – his obvious jealousy, and her determination to flirt and encourage the most unsuitable men equally suggest more going on beneath the surface. It\u2019s perhaps more subtle than modern audiences are used to, but I liked watching out for these delicate little signs.<\/p>\n
The writing is literate and the created Regency world is perfectly believable. It\u2019s one of those books where it\u2019s possible to sink into the story without fear of being jolted back to reality by an infelicitous phrase or a wandering anachronism. I enjoyed it very much, and only the excessive number of characters to keep track of made it sag a little in places. Four stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A nice traditional read, and mostly set in Bath, which is always fun. Very redolent of Georgette Heyer, but that\u2019s not at all a bad thing. Here\u2019s the premise: Julian Aldwyn is the heir to an earldom, and after a sudden illness in his father, he\u2019s realised it\u2019s time for him to marry and secure […]<\/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":[225],"class_list":["post-4683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-ley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4683","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=4683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4687,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4683\/revisions\/4687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}