I love me a good regency.
And what, pray tell, is a regency?
Well, let me tell ya.
You know this lady, right?
She wrote these novels,
All are set in Regency England
when the Prince of Wales was regent during
George III's insanity, 1811-1820.
They wore clothes like this:
(Just spent thirty minutes
staring at 19th century fashion images.
Where does the time go?)
Anyhow, back to regencies.
So, the thing is Miss Austen died a while back
and many addicts fans needed more.
More clothes, more banter, more romance.
More. More. More.
(It's sort of an insatiable little habit.)
Writers began to oblige the market.
(Georgette Heyer, Elizabeth Mansfield,
and Marion Chesney,
to name a few of my faves.)
Lots of sparkling dialog.
Glorious clothes.
Some farce.
A little social commentary.
Plenty of variety,
always returning to the basics,
frothy, sweet, fun and CLEAN romance.
In the 90s, publishers began to lose sight of the basics
when they began to encourage writers to filthify their work.
I stopped reading them.
In fact, so many readers stopped reading them
that authors stopped writing them.
I could only get my fix by re-reading.
Which sucked.
When I realized that she wrote clean Regency Era novels.
I begged an advance copy of her first novel
Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind
which I blogged about here.
In general, I'm against sequels in romance.
Most characters just do not have the oomph to
make it through a sequel credibly.
Miss Delacourt and Sir Anthony do.
Grandaunt Regina and Lucinda do.
maintains the Ashworth sparkle
without taking itself too seriously.
It's filled
with fun and romance and
longing and doubts
and clothes and banter and
obnoxious relatives
and sweet resolution.
I love this book.
I'm betting you will too.
