Regency Bath is in a tangle--a tangle of mismatched couples in Georgette Heyer's rollicking farce of a regency romance, Bath Tangle.
The Earl of Spenborough has died, leaving his twenty-five year old unwed daughter, Serena, and a wife younger than her. And to make matters worse, the earl has left Ivo, the Marquis of Rotherham, the man Serena jilted years ago, as trustee to her fortune.
Serena finds her plight unendurable, but what can she do? With a year of mourning to endure and nowhere to go, the ladies bury themselves in the earl's dower house--until utter boredom urges them to change their circumstances. But not too much. So off they go to Bath.
With such a setup, how can this novel be anything but a comedy?
If you like your regency in one large dose, Ms. Heyer has everything here--alpha and beta heroes, mismatched couples, jilted betrotheds, young girls forced by their parents to wed men much older than they, title-hungry mothers on the hunt for matrimonial prey for their daughters, and money, lots of it, not only owned by the rich aristocrats, but also by the cits who fund said titled aristocrats who then shun their benefactors. The action careens from one comic crisis to another, as the couples honor their promises (or not), even as their hearts urge them elsewhere. And all told with Ms. Heyer's delicious Regency language.
Ivo is my least favorite type of hero, the arrogant and obnoxious alpha male, and he does some distinctly unheroic things. But Serena gives as good as she gets, and together they lead this merry dance of a novel. The secondary characters are appealing and the action is fast-paced, for a wonderful time all around.
Bath Tangle is loads of nonstop comic fun, a treat for the summer or any other time.
Thank you all,
Linda
ARC supplied by Sourcebooks
No comments:
Post a Comment