Review: Amusing Regency Romp
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 26, 2014
This is a good Regency romp.Laugh out loud amusing.A good Regency debut by a talented writer. She can write a good tale and her characterisation is well drawn.The H's initial personality is believable and it is great to see him unravelling, even if the total cure of his obsessive compulsive disorder is somewhat farfetched. Even his bewildered lust at first sight and the sex scenes are very cleverly handled (love his mutterings about her unsuitability and the scene in the barn). The running/drinking scene reminds me of many a university orientation challenge, and could have been more than ghastly, but it serves to demonstrate that the H is as capable of stupidity as the h believes most men to be.The h is great, as much for the shocks she gets as she realises she had imposed another form of control in order to dampen down her fears and convince herself that she is irreplaceable. Of course, her freckles, amazing hair, mismatched eyes and rounded belly (revealed in the barn scene) make her a standout. She behaves appallingly to the H, but gets away with it only until her friends and family start articulating some home truths. She is vulgar, as well, repeating a dirty limerick (declaimed by a very drunken H the night before at the end of the race) when she is sober and in the company of one of her workers - a married man, who laughs but then chastises her.There are plenty of laughs in this story. Even though funny pets can be a turnoff, the pig does a good job in delivering its share of them. Fortunately, the little girls are only bit players and don't become irritating.Why not a 5 star rating? Some of the language, of the h in particular, seems too modern. I can cope with her attitudes, as there were any number of feisty women in Britain at the time, who thumbed their noses at the restrictive rules of the ton, but it is how she articulates them and the vocabulary she uses. A minor quibble, however. I will be buying the next instalment in the trilogy.