Romance Round-Up: May’s Regencies!

For my final romance round-up in May, I slouched back to my admitted favorite sub-genre, the Regency – and not your grandmother’s Regency (your grandmother, that is, not mine – there’s no documentary evidence that my dear Granny ever read a book in her incredibly long life, bless the dear) but this new richer and hyper-hormonal modern version in which the ladies are outspoken and the men – as you can see from these covers – spend more time working out at Planet Fitness than they do playing whist for modest stakes. It’s no good pointing out that such, erm, specimens would have been considered bizarre circus attractions (or worse, day laborers) to the actual high-born denizens of the Regency-era Ton – marketing departments will have their way, and ours is not to question why.

So on a deliciously warm late Spring day recently, I settled the old dogs on piles of blankets, stretched out under the gently-spinning ceiling fan, and gorged on these new Regencies:

A Good Rake is Hard to Find by Manda Collins (St. Martin’s) – The whole Planet Fitness thing steps into the spotlight with this novel’s cover, but the book itself – the first in the new “Lords of Anarchy” series from the delightful Manda Collins, who here spins the story of Lord Frederick “Freddy” Lisle and beautiful, heartbroken Leonora Craven. Freddy is a member of the Lords of Anarchy (although his hearts not completely in it, as we’re told: “Really, Freddy reflected, all it took was a night out with friends to convince him that he was better off spending time with his dogs”), a daredevil carriage-racing ring, and in one such race Leonora’s brother Jonny met his untimely death – putting her on a quest to find out exactly what happened to him and why. Collins does a very adroit job of drawing these two together while also giving her readers a fascinating look at the world of high-speed carriage racing in the Regency era.

His Wicked Reputation by Madeline Hunter (Jove) – Madeline Hunter’s latest novel – a very satisfying and at turns interestingly intellectual thing weighing in at a plump 400-plus pages – likewise opens up a corner of the Regency world about which her readers will be unfamiliar, in this case the world of art ownership and art forgery. The two sides of that world are cannily embodied by our two main characters, Gareth Fitzallen, the bastard son of the Duke of Aylesbury, and Eva Russell, the proud daughter of a down-at-the-heels gentry family. Gareth is investigating an art theft that happened on one of his properties, and Eva makes a small income copying paintings – hence, two narrative arcs that are bound to cross! The novel’s payoff, however, is the spritely characterization of the two leads (only one of whom, rather rudely, is shown on the book’s nonetheless stylish cover): when Eva is giving Gareth a piece of her mind, she says, “You have a charming tendency to think no one knows his own mind as well as you might know it for him.” And Fitz, on being called a charmer, responds: “I am too conceited to deny it. It comes naturally to me. Would that more people endeavored to be charmers. Charm is oil on the machinery of society.” And it, too, is the first in a series – which can be refreshing in this world of the endless genre series.

The Bedding Proposal by Tracy Anne Warren (Signet Select) – The new novel from Tracy Anne Warren is likewise the first book in a series, in this case a trilogy called “The Rakes of Cavendish Square” (always a fun gambit, when a romance author ties a series of books to a specific locale in London). Those aforementioned rakes can be presumed to be a collection of good-hearted ne’er-do-wells who’ll all have their scapegrace ways mended by the right women by-and-by, and as such the whole series is likely to slot very neatly into the kind of traditional Regency Warren does so well (2013’s The Trouble with Princesses was especially enjoyable, I thought). In this series debut, the ne’er-do-well is Lord Leo Byron (identical twin of Lord Lawrence), who’s so jaded as our story opens that he’s actually willing to make an attempt at winning the heart of the notorious divorcee Lady Thalia Lennox, who’s scandalous life has exiled her to the farthest reaches of the Ton – and the exile itself has made her especially touchy about becoming the object of anyone’s scorn or irony – but when she initially attempts to make this clear to Lord Leo, she’s caught off-guard:

“You and I shall never be intimates. Good night, Lord Leopold.”

Spinning around, she marched toward the door.

As she did, she caught sight of a man standing across the room – a man she would have sworn was Leopold Byron had she not known that he was still dripping somewhere behind her. Her step wobbled slightly as her mind worked to figure out the unexpected anomaly.

Twins? Good God, are there two of him?

The Bedding Proposal carries on in that bouncing, smirking vein for the whole of its charming story about these two very gradually coming to like each other, and Warren’s craft never once falters. The book easily had me hankering for the rest of the series.

The Lady Meets Her Match by Gina Conkle (Sourcebooks Casablanca) – Our final Regency (this time around! Try as I might, I doubt I’ll be able to control this particular reading sweet-tooth in favor of randy bikers and Sicilian billionaires) is this latest from Gina Conkle, the author of last year’s thoroughly enjoyable Meet the Earl at Midnight. It’s a saucy, ironic take on the story of Cinderella, where wealthy bachelor Cyrus Ryland holds an elaborate costume ball, is entranced by a masked woman, and is left with only her glass slipper – in this case an equally-incongruous plain brown shoe – behind. The “King of Commerce” vows to find his mystery woman and Conkle’s sparkling novel springs into motion, but it’s a captivating performance even from the first line:

A woman on the verge of moral downfall ought to be well dressed. Clare’s particular transgression was gartered to her thigh, a paper hidden by yards of silk. She walked through the empty alley, confident in one comforting truth: no one dared ask a lady was her skirts concealed.

By time time I’d turned the final page of The Lady Meets Her Match, my bed was littered with Regencies and sleeping dogs, and I was fortified enough to face the next 700-page biography of Napoleon Bonaparte.