Brighton Beauty (Zebra Regency Romance)

Rating:
Summary: Traditional Short Regency Romance
Review: "Brighton Beauty" is a traditional "sweet" Regency romance published by Zebra of about 220 pages. The plot is not very convincing, spoilt Alayna blackmails poor schoolpal Chelsea Grant into taking her place at Lord Rathbone's country seat. Lord Rathbone is Alayna's fiance, an arranged affair, and Alayna has never met him as he lives in Honduras where he owns a plantation. Unexpectedly Lord Rathbone arrives to claim his fiancee at his country seat and Chelsea and he fall in love, while he thinks Chelsea is Alayna. The two main characters are cardboard cutout figures, Chelsea is sweet, young and dazzling beautiful "The Brighton Beauty". She agrees to marry Lord Rathbone, who has abandoned his estate in England and continues to abandon it (though it is rundown) in favour of his slave run plantation in Honduras, where he whisks Chelsea off to at the end of the book. No criticism by either he or Chelsea about slavery, he mentions he is kind to his slaves (no, he has no intention of freeing them). All very distasteful. Author has a historical note about slavery at the end of the book. Couldn't she have made the characters pro-Abolitionist since it was such a strong movement in Britain at the time?