{"id":5003,"date":"2023-08-11T13:47:34","date_gmt":"2023-08-11T13:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=5003"},"modified":"2023-08-11T13:47:34","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T13:47:34","slug":"review-captured-by-mary-lancaster-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2023\/08\/11\/review-captured-by-mary-lancaster-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Captured by Mary Lancaster (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"I enjoyed the first of this series, built around the death in a duel of a duke, no less. The first book told the story of the duke\u2019s young widow and the man who challenged him to the duel. This one features the duke\u2019s sister and the doctor who attended the duel, and although it could be read as a standalone, it makes a lot more sense if read after the first book.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: Lady Hera Severne is released from the oppression of her father, the Duke of Cuttyngham, when he dies in a duel. Uncertain what to do with her life now, she decides to become a paid companion, and finds a position surprisingly easily. Now this is a huge plot contrivance (why on earth would a duke\u2019s daughter become a companion? It makes no sense, but I\u2019m prepared to allow a book one contrivance at the start, so I\u2019ll go with the flow here). Hera finds that her duties are light, and concerned less with her mistress, Lady Astley, than with her husband\u2019s adult ward, who seems benign enough, if a little eccentric, yet is kept under constant watch living separately from the family. George is locked in with his nurse at night (shades of Jane Eyre and the madwoman in the attic), and even doped with laudanum when the family have guests to stop him disturbing the guests. An accidental overdose of laudanum causes Hera to send for the local doctor, who by a huge coincidence is the very same Doctor Rivers who attended the duel (that\u2019s the second big contrivance). Doctor Rivers saves George, but he agrees with Hera that they have to \u2018rescue\u2019 him from his captivity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an odd thing, but this is the second Regency book I\u2019ve read recently to feature an autistic person, but this one I found far less convincing. George was supposedly so disturbing as a boy that he was locked away, and the world told he was dead, yet when Hera and Justin set him loose in the world, suddenly he\u2019s able to cope pretty well, with no more than mild eccentricity. I\u2019m sorry, but even a non-autistic person who\u2019d been locked away in a very restricted world for twenty-odd years would have serious trouble adjusting to the real world, so this element of the story didn\u2019t work at all for me.<\/p>\n

However, I was happy to whizz past all that with no more than a raised eyebrow, since the romance was charming and far more convincing, despite an outbreak of I\u2019m-not-worthy-itis from the good doctor. But the couple (and George) end up in Brussels with the characters from book 1, where, with only a mild episode of melodrama matters are resolved in a satisfactory way. As is usual with Mary Lancaster\u2019s books, there is some sex in the story, but it\u2019s not terribly graphic. Despite the surfeit of contrivances, this is so well-written and enjoyably entertaining that I gave it four stars.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I enjoyed the first of this series, built around the death in a duel of a duke, no less. The first book told the story of the duke\u2019s young widow and the man who challenged him to the duel. This one features the duke\u2019s sister and the doctor who attended the duel, and although it […]<\/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":[149],"class_list":["post-5003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-lancaster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003","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=5003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5007,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003\/revisions\/5007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}