Review: Reckless viscount
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 7, 2013
Abbigael Granger, a well-off Irish lass, is sent to London in the 1820s to seek a husband.  Dublin is the second city of the Empire but her rural home in Donegal is far from society.  Her father, a member of the Privy Council, places her with his cousins who promise to introduce her to all the right people. But at 21, and not a raving beauty, she's not guaranteed of success.Leif, Lord Riley, is a RECKLESS VISCOUNT used to ignoring husband hunters but from the first time he meets Abbigael eavesdropping at a door he notices that she's not the usual schooled miss. Devil-may-care with a wild reputation, he inveigles an introduction.  But Abbigael is conscious that she must behave impeccably, because after her mother's death in a carriage accident she suffered a breakdown, and she can't allow any suspicion to taint her now; nobody would wish to marry possible insanity.  Leif's elderly father dies and he inherits 500 acres of ruined soil in northern Sussex, with a crumbling castle for a home. Suddenly an heiress is just what he needs to restore his property, but nobody respectable wants to let him near their daughter, and as for Abbigael, who intrigues him, rumours are already flying....I don't recall reading about possible insanity before in a historical romance heroine, and Amy Sandas addresses a situation which we still tiptoe around today. If someone has a breakdown we see them as fragile and in need of support or medication.  In the 1800s there was no medication, except the opiate laudanum, and little understanding of mental illness of short or long duration.  While this is an adult romance, we see lovemaking in the context of a relationship.  I was surprised that Leif is particularly determined to restore an orangery on his estate; surely at this period everyone would have given priority to a family chapel?