![\"\"](\"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/solicitorswife.jpg\")
A fun little novella, which drew me in by the plot device of an arranged marriage with switched brides. I\u2019m always fascinated by the legalities of Regency marriage so I was keen to see how the author would tackle this.<\/p>\nA fun little novella, which drew me in by the plot device of an arranged marriage with switched brides. I\u2019m always fascinated by the legalities of Regency marriage so I was keen to see how the author would tackle this.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the premise: Rupert Iverson is a well-established solicitor who arranges a marriage to a demure, biddable wife. What he doesn\u2019t know is that the proposed wife is in love with someone else (an apothecary\u2019s apprentice – good luck with that!) and so her identical twin sister takes her place, and she\u2019s not at all the biddable sort. Hoyden would be a more apt description. For her part, Ruby Galeheart hasn\u2019t thought much about the marriage beyond saving her sister, so it\u2019s a surprise to discover that her husband is rather an agreeable sort, who doesn\u2019t seem to mind when she creates all sorts of chaos.<\/p>\n
Now, this is a wonderful premise for a book, and of course the reader is on tenterhooks wondering what will happen when Rupert realises that he\u2019s been duped. And then there\u2019s the even more intriguing question – is the marriage even legal? Happily, the author doesn\u2019t attempt to whitewash over the consequences, and since Rupert is a solicitor who knows the law, he has no hesitation over the legality or otherwise of the situation, and what needs to be done about it.<\/p>\n
The book is too short to have much depth beyond the basic plot, but even so, the characters are not mere cardboard cutouts, and the story is an engaging and amusing read. I have one or two historical quibbles, namely, Rupert would be an attorney at this date, not a solicitor (which was a much more specific and unusual sort of lawyer), and there would only be one wedding ring at the ceremony, not two (husbands didn\u2019t wear wedding rings until well into the twentieth century). None of that mattered much, though. This is a fun little read, short but sweet. Four stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A fun little novella, which drew me in by the plot device of an arranged marriage with switched brides. I\u2019m always fascinated by the legalities of Regency marriage so I was keen to see how the author would tackle this. Here\u2019s the premise: Rupert Iverson is a well-established solicitor who arranges a marriage to a […]<\/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":[293],"class_list":["post-6152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-lim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152","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=6152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6154,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152\/revisions\/6154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}