A SPECIAL SUNDAY EDITION OF THE SATURDAY MORNING POST
At the time I'm posting this piece in mid-March 2025, I've read, or at least tried to read, 31 books so far this year. A number of them have been novellas, and others DNFs but clearly posting one book review a week isn't going to work. I've been doubling up some and you can expect to see more extra issues until I get the backlog down to two moths, eight postings. I have a 16 post backlog at the moment.
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.
The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer B+
Elinor Rochdale, age 26, is a woman of good birth whose father gambled away his fortune, leaving his widow and daughter destitute. Now alone in the world, Elinor is forced to make a living as a governess. Arriving on the stage coach late in a village for her next job, she is expecting someone to meet her. And indeed, there was someone, though it turns out, there were supposed to be two young ladies to be picked up, and one did not show, so that Elinor was picked up in place of the second young lady, her proper ride had not shown up yet. She is taken in a fine coach to a run-down mansion and there she meets Lord Carlyon, who assumes that the is the young lady he had engaged via an newspaper advertisement, the one who didn't show up.
It seems that Lord Carlyon has been looking after a wild nephew. This nephew has come to hate him, even as Carlyon has tried to do all he could for him. The nephew is rapidly drinking himself to death. As it stands, Lord Carlyon would inherit the nephew's estate when he dies, and fears that his actions would appear as if he is profiting from his guardianship of his nephew. The nephew, hating Lord Carlyon, wants to keep his estate (what is left of it) out of his Uncle's hands, and one way to do that would be to have a wife to leave it to. This arrangement suits Lord Carlyon as well, and for his reasons I has advertised for a wife for his nephew. As it turns out, just in time, and the nephew is severely wounded in a drunken fight, so if he's to get married on this side of the grave, there are only a few hours to do so. It is up to Lord Carlyon to talk a very reluctant Elinor into marry his dying nephew, and only the dreary prospect of being a governess the rest of her life, finally brings her around to agreeing to get married to the dying nephew.
Add to this set up a possible French spy, various new relatives, a young cousin with a rather wild, but goodhearted dog living in her "husband's" rather rundown estate with secret passages, and you have another Georgette Heyer Regency romance/mystery.
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