Another KU pick this week. This time a Regency romance from a contemporary self-published author.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below
Guinea-Gold Hair by Florrie Boleyn (Jane Page Walton) C+
This was a nice, pleasant book. All the characters were nice and pleasant. The story was nice and pleasant, not challenging at all. It moved along at a pleasant pace. I had no issues with the quality of writing. It was hardly spicy at all. And I dare say that if I was in the target audience, I would've likely rated it higher.
The story concerns Jenny, the seventeen daughter of a miller whose financial position is perilous due to the economic conditions of the time. Jenny is offered a chance to work in the big house of a local gentry as a nursery maid by the steward at that house who is her late mother's brother. She takes it. Jenny is a hard worker, whose job includes not only looking after the children, but washing the dirty cloths of the baby of the family. When she gets a chance to do up the hair of the bright sixteen year old young lady of the family, Marianne, hey become friends, despite their different statuses in life. Then, for various reasons, Jenny becomes her maid when the family goes up to London for the season, where Marianne is expected to land a suitable husband. The bulk of the story takes place in London as Jenny gets involved in Marianne's prospects for marriage.
Boleyn has written four books in this series, and clearly has done her research, though the story presents the life and times of the period at a pretty basic level, so says I, an old hand at reading the Regency romances of the writer who is considered the originator of the genre, Georgette Heyer. The difference in the details of the period and the characters and their depths is quite noticeable. I don't know if this reflects the extent of the author's research, or if it represents the level of accessibility to the intricacies of the period that she expects her readers desire. I have to wonder if she has ever read a Heyer Regency romance.
For me, it read to read like a middle grade book version of a Heyer Regency romance. It lacks the fine details of that time and social order, the language of the time, the depth of characters, as well as the clever and witty writing of Heyer, which are all the things that I read Heyer for, rather than the romance, which is the focus of this story. But, as I said, this may be a feature rather that a flaw, since I am not familiar with the expectations of contemporary Regency romance readers, and thus, this is not a criticism of the book, simply an observation.
As I implied at the start, this is a nice, harmless story where even the villains have a heart of gold. I like pleasant stories, I like peasant characters, I liked this book. But is is not quite my cup of tea. I am not its target audience, and that is reflected in my slightly above average grade. If it sounds like your cup of tea, you will probably grade it higher.
The author has written three other books in this Walcott Manor series, and a series of Victorian mysteries as well.
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