“Whenever I’ve read about it, in some trashy romance, I mean.”
I’ll keep this short because of my tirade against Heyer the other day. From the blurb:
Charming and wise in the ways of the world, Bath society-belle Miss Abigail Wendover has tried hard to detach her spirited niece Fanny from a plausible fortune-hunter. Her valiant efforts on behalf of her relative become vastly more complicated with the arrival of Miles Calverleigh. The black sheep of his family, a cynical, outrageous devil-may-care with a scandalous past – that would be a connection more shocking even than Fanny’s unwise liaison with his nephew! But Abby, adept at managing her sweet, silly sister Selina, her lively niece and the host of her admirers among Bath’s circumscribed society, has less success in controlling her own unruly heart.
Abby herself is quite an interesting character: she has a certain independence of mind that is refreshing in this sort of romance, although the fact that she finds Miles vexatiously handsome is frustrating because we all know exactly what is going to happen.
All the characters fall into such predictable types – Selina the silly sister, Fanny the niece with promise and independence who is bringing trouble to the family with her heart, boorish brothers and brothers-in-law, a pleasant set of brother-in-law and sister… is anyone else seeing the cast list of Pride & Prejudice here with different names?
And I got 72 pages in (out of 252, so I adhered to my 25% rule!) and NOTHING has happened. The scene has been set, and now there are some people in it, wandering about.
No thank you.
from Amazon*
I have not read Heyer since I was a teenager, but am dying to see if I have the same experience as you on re-reading! She also wrote detective novels – dare you try one of those?
Not much happens in the Mona Lisa, either. The beauty of Heyer’s writing is not in any action-packed adventure, but in the quality of the draughtsmanship.