Category: Regency Era (1811-1820)

The Regency in Great Britain was a period when King George III was deemed unfit to rule and his son ruled as his proxy as Prince Regent. On the death of George III in 1820, the Prince Regent became George IV. The term Regency can refer to various stretches of time; some are longer than the decade of the formal Regency which lasted from 1811–1820.
Preceded by: Georgian era
Followed by: Victorian era
Monarch: George III, George IV, William IV

The Groom List by Ella Quinn

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Part of a Series, Regency Era (1811-1820)Leave a comment

The Groom List (The Worthington Brides, #3)Barbara’s rating: 3.3 out of 5 Stars
Series: The Worthington Brides #3
Publication Date: 6/25/24
Period: Regency
Number of Pages: 352

This is the third (and I believe final) book in this Worthington spinoff series, so you get a nice wrap-up for all of the couples previously featured in the series. You also get a fair amount of redundancy in the beginning because the three books in this series happen concurrently. Therefore, you get some of the same scenes, just told from another person’s perspective.

Lady Alice Carpenter is closer than close with her two sisters and they are now sharing the wonderful experience of their first season together. They’ve made a list of requirements the males in their lives must meet – and her two sisters have found their mates. Alice didn’t realize how lonely she’d be when they were gone or how much she’d miss them. Now, she just wants to marry and have a family of her own. In her anxiety to join her sisters in marital bliss, she might not have been as careful as she should have been in vetting the men wooing her. One gave her disconcerting tingles, but he seemed to be a useless fribble, while the other gave her no tingles, but agreed with everything she asked about from her list.

Gifford (Giff), Marquis of St. Albans, is pretty much a blank slate. I’m not sure how he made it to maturity without having a thought of his own, but he seems to have done so. Whatever his parents decreed, he adhered to. That whole family dynamic just made no sense to me. Perhaps if there were more page time describing the parents and how they came to be and how this strong-willed, demanding duchess allowed her son to be raised to know nothing and have no thoughts, I just didn’t understand. We could have surely done with less ‘Worthington’ page time to allow for a page or two on Giff’s family and the dynamics of it. At any rate, Giff has no thoughts on political or charitable endeavors, no idea of how to run the ducal estate when his father passes, and gives no arguments when his parents tell him it is time to marry. He seems to have no initiative and has never tried to earn money to supplement his meager allowance nor has he bestirred himself to form an opinion of any of the current political and social events/issues of the day. So, I had to wonder how he found the initiative to find a bride for himself. Does that sound like I didn’t like him? That isn’t truly the case. In general, I liked him, I just never understood the need for him to be such a vacuous fribble.

Giff is attracted to Alice as soon as he sees her riding in the park with her sisters. She seems interested in him as well – until she doesn’t. What did he do wrong? When she tells him she doesn’t want him to pursue her any longer, he realizes how much he has gone wrong in his pursuit of her. Is it too late for him? She is being courted by someone else and seems seriously interested. However, Giff doesn’t trust the man who is wooing Alice and endeavors to change his ways to win her back.

I enjoyed the last half of the book – and I absolutely LOVED the part of the book where Miss Greenway visits to respond to the note sent by Alice’s younger sisters. That is one of the best villain punishments I’ve ever seen in any book. I finally came to like Giff after he discovered there was a world outside his own head and I liked Alice all along. As I mentioned earlier, what I would have really liked in this book was less of the Worthington connections and more of Giff’s family – why was there animosity between Giff’s father and Scottish grandfather? Was his parent’s union a love match? I would have thought so, but they didn’t act that way. One thing that perplexed me was how the villain could slip through all those Worthington-world folks without his nefarious intents being detected. The Duchess seemed to get all the pertinent information within hours – or a day at most. Giff was grilled repeatedly, yet the villain was asked a few innocuous questions (by Alice) and let slide. That doesn’t seem like the very protective Worthington bunch I’ve known and loved to date. So, I read the book and I liked it okay, but I wouldn’t read it a second time.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Kiss That Made Her Countess by Laura Martin

On By TracyIn Author Collaboration Series, Georgian Era (1714-1837), Part of a Series, Regency Era (1811-1820), Tracy's ReviewsLeave a comment

The Kiss That Made Her Countess (A Season of Celebration Book 3)The Kiss That Made Her Countess by Laura Martin

Tracy’s rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Series: A Season of Celebration, #3

Release Date: June 25, 2024

Miss Alice James is not normally reckless, but with the prospect of being engaged to her vile cousin Cecil, she embraces the idea of one final night of freedom and agrees to sneak into a masquerade party with her best friend Lydia. Once at the party the girls are separated and Alice meets Simon Westcroft, the Earl of Northumberland. They share a dance and then a kiss, before she runs off. The next day it comes out that they were seen, and Simon does the honorable thing and proposes. But Simon has secrets, and his proposal has conditions, most notably that he will be leaving the country within days of the wedding Alice and does not plan to ever return. But with her only other option is to marry Cecil – she accepts. She sets out to build a life for herself alone and does so for almost a year when without a word, Simon returns and upends everything. Can marriage to a stranger lead to HEA?

Simon inherited the earldom from his older brother Robert, who had been the earl for years, since the sudden death of their father – a death, that a very young Simon witnessed. Simon grieved hard for his father but thankfully he had Robert to help him through. But when just a few years after Robert married, he too suddenly passed away, Simon is adrift and lost to grief. He is sure that he too will die young and without warning, as he is suffering from headaches just like his father and brother – because of this he has decided to leave his home and die alone, to spare his family the pain of his death. He never anticipated meeting Alice and had never planned to marry, but when it becomes clear that she will be ruined unless he marries her, he proposes. But marriage changes nothing, he is still going to die, and he is even more determined to leave England. But when the headaches stop and a doctor tells him it is not his time to go, he returns home to England and a wife he hasn’t even written to in almost a year. Simon should be happy, but instead he is consumed by survivors’ guilt and refuses to try and have a happy life with Alice. Will he ever let go of his guilt and let love in or has he doomed them both to a lonely, loveless life?

I liked this book, but I don’t think I would read it again, as it was a lot more angsty than I thought it would be and I found Simon’s continuous running away to be emotionally exhausting. I understood that the author was trying to walk the reader through the process of his grief and his survivors’ guilt, and it was probably an accurate representation, but for me it was just annoying that he repeatedly refused to be happy and honestly it started to feel like a pity party. That aside, Alice was amazing, and I wanted better for her – I am not convinced that Simon won’t once again run away. One other thing that irked me – he is the Earl of Northumberland, but he referred to and called Lord Westcroft and Alice called Lady Westcroft (as well as his brother’s widow and his mother) WHY? They should be Lord and Lady Northumberland – sigh. This is my first time reading this author and while I didn’t love this story, I did like her writing style and would be willing to read more of her work in the future. If you like angst, low steam and HEA – I would suggest you give this book a read.

*I am voluntarily leaving a review for an eARC that I requested and was provided to me by the publisher. All opinions in this review are my own. *