Victoria and the Rogue August 20, 2010

Victoria and the Rogue by Meg Cabot

Sixteen year old Victoria is on her way back to England from India to find herself a husband. But she is still en route when she becomes engaged to the handsome and charming Lord Malfrey. That is good. There comes into her life yet another not-so-handome gentleman who proves to be a real thorn in her side. That is not good. And between managing these two men Victoria feels she has a great responsibility in managing the affairs of her cousins – the Gardiners.

I picked this one up (having been told by a friend that Cabot wrote light-hearted, feel-good fluff)for an easy, relaxed read – my first Meg Cabot – and I wasn’t at all impressed. For one, the style was a little contrived, obviously written by someone who doesn’t know much about the Regency era and for whom the language of the day does not come easily. Secondly, way too many liberties are taken with utter disregard to the social etiquette of the time. I also found it gratingly annoying that the heroine was off to rectify and improve everyone while she seemed to be twice as faulty as anyone. She is quite the shrew and a very interfering busy body with too much self consequence. I think this is a story that could easily have been finished in less than a hundred pages for most of it was repeated, mindless pontification on Victoria’s part.

I have watched The Princess Diaries movies and enjoyed them. But this book was a real disappointment. I realise that it is written for teenagers, but surely it could have been better! Also, to anyone used to reading well flushed out Regency romances (especially Georgette Heyer) this is a farce. I’m sorely tempted to never read Cabot again…but I suppose she is better with something contemporary? I will give one of The Princess Diaries a try.

While I would have given this just one star, there were three or four instances where I did laugh and so it gets a two.

Friday’s Child August 10, 2010

Friday’s Child by Georgette Heyer

If there’s one thing I like about Georgette Heyer it is a plathora of heroes and heroines – each so unlike the others with a character and personality all their own. It is thus with Friday’s Child with so unlikely a starring pair. Lord Sheringham (Sherry to his friends) and Hero (Kitten to Sherry and his friends) are a young pair that marry only because the one needs his inheritance in hand as quickly as possible, and the other because there is no once she has ever admired and loved as she has dear Sherry. But with two mere children setting up house chaos and misunderstandings are bound to happen.

Hero, completely uninitiated in the ways of the London ton has only a careless Sherry to guide her in most matters. However, it takes the young lord a long while to discover that his little wife takes everything he says as gospel truth and that he must mind his tongue. She is forever unwittingly getting into scrapes, and we see Sherry grow up within the pages of the book as he fishes her out of pools of trouble. But things come to a climax when he scold Hero severly for something gone wrong, and she realises that she is ruining his life and so runs away. She is hopelessly in love with him and would rather he forget about her and marry the first woman he had ever proposed to…

Isabel…

…the instigator of the subplot that runs through the novel. Sherry’s friend, George, is a penniless baron deeply in love with the Incomparable, Isabella. Their affair is held up as a foil to and intertwine with that of Sherry’s and Hero’s. Misunderstanding arise between the two couples but a final reconilliation is reached – of course!

I love this book for its fascinating characters. Sherry is one of my favourite Heyer heroes (he is perhaps the only one that readers watch grow in the story) and his best friends Freddy and Gil are simply a riot in all their earnest endeavours to reconcile Sherry with Hero.