As with the other 2 Regency-set books by Sheila Simonson that I have read ("Lady Elizabeth's Comet" and "A Cousinly Connection"), this one also has a great feeling for the period, the way people spoke and dressed and behaved in that time. On the other hand, the characters and the story were lacking in certain respects, and the romance was practically non-existent.  
 
The story is about a young widow, Emily, who fosters the 2 very young children of the hero Richard Falk, whose Spanish wife has died and who is still working as an officer in the campaign to drive Napoleon from Portugal and Spain. Richard has a great deal of family trouble (certain members of his family are trying to kill him), so he can't leave the children with them.  But of course they find out where he and the children are, so a lot of complications and trouble ensue. In the end it didn't draw me in all that much and I wasn't passionately rooting for any of the good characters. The lack of any romance between the two main characters didn't help (they finally share a kiss on the last page of the book, but that's it, even though the story has gone on for more than 3 years and for almost 400 pages!)

 

(I originally posted this review in April of 2014 but somehow it disappeared from Booklikes?  I had to retrieve it from Goodreads.)

 

As with the other 2 Regency-set books by Sheila Simonson that I have read ("Lady Elizabeth's Comet" and "A Cousinly Connection"), this one also has a great feeling for the period, the way people spoke and dressed and behaved in that time. On the other hand, the characters and the story were lacking in certain respects, and the romance was practically non-existent.  

 

The story is about a young widow, Emily, who fosters the 2 very young children of the hero Richard Falk, whose Spanish wife has died and who is still working as an officer in the campaign to drive Napoleon from Portugal and Spain. Richard has a great deal of family trouble (certain members of his family are trying to kill him), so he can't leave the children with them.  But of course they find out where he and the children are, so a lot of complications and trouble ensue. In the end it didn't draw me in all that much and I wasn't passionately rooting for any of the good characters. The lack of any romance between the two main characters didn't help (they finally share a kiss on the last page of the book, but that's it, even though the story has gone on for more than 3 years and for almost 400 pages!)

 

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. 

Romance series generally follow a pattern: each book follows a sibling or friend of the previous book, and marries them off in turn. Couples from earlier novels generally have walk-on parts, spending just long enough on-page to let the reader know that they are deliriously happy and have plenty of babies.

This is not that kind of series.

The Clanrosses from [b:Lady Elizabeth's Comet|2908100|Lady Elizabeth's Comet (Clanross, #1)|Sheila Simonson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1257779204s/2908100.jpg|2935256] and the Falks from [b:The Bar Sinister|2616896|The Bar Sinister (Clanross, Prequel)|Sheila Simonson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1261150964s/2616896.jpg|2641551] are back, and they make up the majority of the novel. Elizabeth's younger half-sisters' romances and intrigues provide the driving force of the plot, but the older, already married characters are the ones I (and I think the author) was most interested in. They have so much left to negotiate and figure out, for themselves and as a couple, and watching them work through it was really fascinating. And I really enjoyed the way history is portrayed in these books--there is real danger from the poor people, who have real grievances, and the censorship of the written word actually seems very threatening here. That said, there isn't really a narrative arc in this book--no build up and then a climax, I mean--and so although my affection for the characters kept me interested, the events themselves are rapidly fading from my memory.

The only flaws in this book are the multitudinous typos. Otherwise it is completely engaging, very humorous, with a touch of angst after Elizabeth realizes who she really loves and thinks it is a lost cause. Written in the first person (the heroine's), and wonderfully so.