{"id":5653,"date":"2024-10-06T14:36:23","date_gmt":"2024-10-06T14:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=5653"},"modified":"2024-10-06T14:36:23","modified_gmt":"2024-10-06T14:36:23","slug":"review-the-sprinter-by-kate-archer-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/10\/06\/review-the-sprinter-by-kate-archer-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Sprinter by Kate Archer (2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"Well, here\u2019s a thing – a Kate Archer book that failed to make the 5* grade. What went wrong? Well, technically nothing. The book\u2019s as entertaining as the previous ones, but somehow it felt very samey. The country girl brought up to London to be launched into society by a high-ranking lady with no daughter of her own, the business of planning gowns and public appearances, the (male) relation of said high-ranking lady who is immediately drawn to the country girl, the balls and misunderstandings and comic servants and so on. There are differences, but there\u2019s a strong air of deja vu about it.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: Lady Heathway is one of six ladies who have no daughter of their own, so decide to help a girl into society who would otherwise not have a season. Lady Heathway\u2019s chosen girl is Grace Yardley, daughter of a deceased viscount, who has been banished to the dower house with her drooping mother by the new viscount. With very little money to live on (I wonder why? Where is the widow\u2019s jointure?) and the dower house practically falling down around their ears, her mother takes to her bed and Grace struggles to manage with just a couple of servants. Into this dispiriting setup arrives the letter from Lady Heathway inviting Grace to London. She can\u2019t possibly leave her mother, so she declines and that appears to be that.<\/p>\n

Lady Heathway, however, is not a lady who allows that to be that. She turns up at the dower house, tame nephew, Lord Gresham, in tow, and summarily disposes of all objections. Grace\u2019s mother is to have the full time care of a nurse to tend to her needs for whatever ails her, and a top physician from London will be dispatched to oversee the case. Grace is to pack and leave for London immediately. And so it happens.<\/p>\n

Grace is quite happy to have the pleasure of a season, and soon finds that Lady Heathway has been planning this for a long time, even to the precise dress designs. She still worries about her mother, but she\u2019s enjoying herself, and especially the company of handsome Lord Gresham, who seems to be spending a lot of time calling at the house. But the letters from her mother are deeply concerning – the doctor and nurse are overbearing, and force her out of doors and to eat things she\u2019d rather not eat, and have they no sympathy for a poor invalid at all? But when Lady Heathway dismisses these concerns out of hand, Grace determines to make a bolt for the country to see her mother, and climbs out of her bedroom window to do so.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, everything that could go wrong, does, and Grace acquires a reputation as a sprinter (hence the book\u2019s title). From here the book spirals into a tangled web of plot complications, with Lord Gresham determined to keep all other suitors away from Grace so that he can marry her himself, while she thinks she has no chance with him, and determines to accept the first offer she gets, in order to get her sick mother out of the leaky dower house as soon as possible. And meanwhile, the villain of the piece is determined to throw a spoke in everyone\u2019s wheels and get his revenge.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, it all works out satisfactorily in the end, with all misunderstandings cleared up, and I did enjoy it, but perhaps I\u2019ve just read too many of Archer\u2019s books back to back because it didn\u2019t resonate with me the way the previous ones did. But the humour is still there in spades, and I\u2019m hopeful that the next book will be a little bit different, to restore the freshness. The writing is a pleasure to read, as always, although I wondered a little at White\u2019s having a pool room (could this be billiards, perhaps?). Four stars.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, here\u2019s a thing – a Kate Archer book that failed to make the 5* grade. What went wrong? Well, technically nothing. The book\u2019s as entertaining as the previous ones, but somehow it felt very samey. The country girl brought up to London to be launched into society by a high-ranking lady with no daughter […]<\/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":[267],"class_list":["post-5653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-archer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653","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=5653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5657,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653\/revisions\/5657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}