Like "Lady Elizabeth's Comet", this book is a wonderful depiction of Regency England, with all the details (language, dress, society, household details, farming, horses, climate, travel, etc etc) accurate for the time and place. 

The story is about Jane Ash, a young woman who is in danger of being put "on the shelf" but who refuses to marry her persistent suitor simply because she has no other options - she'd rather live a spinster than marry someone she knows she won't be able to stand. Jane is sent to spend some time at her recently widowed aunt's home in Dorset, helping to look after her nieces and nephews because her aunt is barely coping. Everyone at the aunt's home is waiting for the new head of the family, whom they have never met, to finally show up, and the widowed aunt, of course, is convinced that the new head of the family will put her and her children out on the street.  

In the meantime, the new family head, Julian Stretton, was very badly wounded at the Battle of Waterloo and has spent months recovering at his home in Yorkshire. He finally, unwillingly, heads down to Dorset to see how things are going there, and when he gets there, he has to deal with the chaotic family situation, the widow's hostility, and the debts left by his father and older brother. His only allies in these battles and seemingly the only humans with any common sense that he encounters at the family seat in Dorset are Jane and her companion Miss Goodnight.

I would have preferred a little more emphasis on the romance in this story - one didn't really detect any attraction between Jane and Julian until almost the end of the book, and for quite a long while it seemed as if nothing was going to happen besides Jane and Julian solving the various problems the Stretton family, especially Aunt Louisa, threw into Julian's face. That got a bit tedious, even though a lot of situations were pretty funny (e.g. the terrible twins Horatio and Arthur).  I would also have preferred less emphasis on the difficulties of the secondary characters, e.g. Miss Goodnight's motion sickness, Jane's father's contrariness and controlling tendencies. They just detracted from the main story and not in an enjoyable way.

So I can't give this one 5 stars, but 4 stars easily on the excellent characterization of the main characters and the great depiction of the Regency period. 

The "Princesses in Hiding" series is about three young women, princesses of a small fictional German principality, who are hiding in England from an anarchist gang that murdered their father and the eldest sister's husband and wants to destroy the country's government. 

Princess Emilie, the heroine, is the middle sister and spends most of the story impersonating a young man as the tutor of the Duke of Ashland's son. The Duke has very deep wounds, both emotional and physical, and spends all his time at his estate because he's afraid of society seeing his disfigured face and body. Emilie falls deeply in love with him and he with her, although the Duke doesn't realize that the "Emily" he's fallen in love with is the same person as his son's tutor.  It's complicated but quite beautiful ... 

The last part of the story is taken up with evading and eventually destroying the anarchist gang and for me the cloak-and-dagger stuff was just too confusing, especially trying to figure out what the governess, Miss Dingleby, and the Duke of Olympia, the princess' uncle and the guy pulling all the strings in the background, were actually up to. The descriptions of the action were almost impossible for me to follow. 

The love story is wonderful, the shenanigans with the anarchist gang a lot less so.