Coronation Summer: Library Edition

Rating:
Summary: What was Angela thinking?
Review: I love Angela Thirkell's books--she is one of my favorite authors along with Trollope and Austen. But she wrote a few clinkers, and this is one of them. I would have guessed that Georgette Heyer wrote this book, in a blind test. It has all the cloying archness of the (only) book by Heyer I read and which I forever associate with Regency romances. Of course, this IS a Regency romance--NOT one of her wonderful Barsetshire books, so maybe it was a misguided experiment.

Rating:
Summary: Unworthy of Thirkell
Review: I love the Thirkell books but this one is an aberration. It's trite and obvious. The characters are not particularly interesting. It's as if the author decided to try something different -- and it didn't work. Skip this one and read her other works.

Rating:
Summary: Flummery
Review: Surely, dear reader, this book must be a parody of Austen and Trollope. But one turns the pages with an uneasy consciousness that one has not been let in on the joke.