A Mini-Binge Possibility For Regency-Era Comedies of Manners

I recently wrote about a binge-worthy trilogy, Truly Devious. Now I have a two-volume binge suggestion, this one dealing with the Regency-era-women-looking-for-husbands.

I am a fan of Patrice Kindl's Keeping the Castle, a book I thought had the Regency romance set up with a modern twist, because the young woman main character was...

"...all business, not romance. She's out to use her beauty, which she knows won't last long, to score a wealthy husband who will save her family's dilapidated castle home, thus providing for her mother and very young brother, as well as all the people who work for the family. A lot is riding on her. She's a lot like the female lead in a contemporary YA novel who is intent on going into a profession. The outsider male in this case isn't a rogue, as you find in the old-time romances. He's an outsider because he can actually do something. In this aristocratic world, doing nothing because you've inherited wealth is held in higher regard than being smart enough to make a buck."

Kindl did a second book set in the same world and described as a "companion volume to Keeping the Castle." A School for Brides involves a girls' boarding school where the students are being educated to become wives, though the area is woefully short on husband material. 

I found this book a little heavy on characters and their story lines. I would have been happy if some of those characters had carried their own books. However, as I got closer to the end, the skulduggery and romance provided a lot more narrative drive.

It's been so many years since I've read Keeping the Castle that I didn't realize A School for Brides included some characters from the first book until I was reading up on it in order to write this post. Read the books one after the other, so you don't miss anything the way I did. 

By the way, I also liked Patrice Kindl's Owl in Love, which is very different from Castle and School.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Alternative History

That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston is a quiet book in a very unique setting. Basically, it's a romance with your classic YA torn-between- two-lovers scenario. It begins with young upper class women (and, if I recall correctly, men) doing the debutante thing in the city of Toronto and then moves to an idyllic Canadian lake. The relationships are worked out without a lot of passion and drama. What raises the interest level here is the kinds of relationships we're talking about and the world the whole story is set in.

What we have here is a well-developed universe with computers...DNA issues...a superficially twenty-first century-type setting. But we also have a British Empire that the sun hasn't set on with a powerful queen, as well as a United States from which pirates set out to pillage Canadian/British ships on the Great Lakes. What's more, this is a particularly diverse world, in large part because the historic Queen Victoria from whom the present queen is descended married off her children to leaders all over the world, not just to European (and, of course, white) royalty. So the royal family is diverse and that makes it acceptable and normal for every other segment of society.

One of the many nice things about this book is that it doesn't preach or hit readers over the head with any Hey, look how we have characters from all over the world here! Look what we do with sexuality! Everything is just there, as if it's just totally run-of-the-mill life. Which, in a book, it should be.

A Regency/Spy/Fantasy Mash-up

Murder, Magic, and What We Wore by Kelly Jones is a gem, especially for readers who, like myself, spent many hours of their youth reading regency novels. Sixteen-year-old Annis Whitworth and her intellectual aunt have been left destitute by the sudden death of Annis's father. But Annis, whose big skill up to that point appears to have been advising her friends on how they should dress, is no classic damsel in distress, facing a sad future as a governess or companion. She discovers she has the ability to sew glamours into clothing, creating magical outfits in this world where glamours for this and that are a fact of life.

Oh, and also, she wants to follow her father into the spy business.

Regency novels often involve romance. This is more of an Austen-type social commentary with the strongest feminist tone I can recall ever seeing in a book of this type. There's even a #metoo type thing going on at one point. And, like That Inevitable Victorian Thing, there's no metaphorical neon sign here to make sure readers get it. This is merely the world of this book.