The Love Match/Quadrille (Omnibus) (Regency Romance)

Rating:
Summary: Well, Three Stars for One, Four for the Other
Review: This is actually a reprinting of two Chesney novels. The first, The Love Match, is the final volume of a trilogy. You can enjoy it quite well without having read the first two books, however. This is a high-quality story with a great heroine and fabulous secondary characters as well as a hero who is much more sympathetic than many. Felicity, the heroine, has been left with a fortune in jewels by her adoptive parent but is determined not to use them. Instead she decides to make her living as a novelist. Her attempt turns into a best-selling novel, but her authorship is discovered, and the gentleman who finds her out pledges to help her discover the secret of her birth...out of purely platonic friendship, of course. Naturally things work out just as we hoped in the end but getting there is three-quarters of the fun. This is the novel I would give four stars to.

The second novel, Quadrille, I would give just three stars, although it is also an enjoyable read. The story centers around Hugo and Mary. Mary is a plain girl who was married to Hugo for his title, while she brought her desperately needed fortune to him. Hugo is an officer in the British army and brought her along with him to Brussels. The details of the Battle of Waterloo are for the most part seen through the eyes of those who stay behind, but it is after the pair return to England that the story really picks up. Mary falls in love with her gruff, much-older husband, while he does not care much one way or the other for her. There are some rather coarse and shocking moments in this book (I believe it is one of Chesney's earlier efforts) but it is still fun. And when purchasing two books for the price of one, it is hard to feel a loser.

Rating:
Summary: Well, Three Stars for One, Four for the Other
Review: This is actually a reprinting of two Chesney novels. The first, The Love Match, is the final volume of a trilogy. You can enjoy it quite well without having read the first two books, however. This is a high-quality story with a great heroine and fabulous secondary characters as well as a hero who is much more sympathetic than many. Felicity, the heroine, has been left with a fortune in jewels by her adoptive parent but is determined not to use them. Instead she decides to make her living as a novelist. Her attempt turns into a best-selling novel, but her authorship is discovered, and the gentleman who finds her out pledges to help her discover the secret of her birth...out of purely platonic friendship, of course. Naturally things work out just as we hoped in the end but getting there is three-quarters of the fun. This is the novel I would give four stars to.

The second novel, Quadrille, I would give just three stars, although it is also an enjoyable read. The story centers around Hugo and Mary. Mary is a plain girl who was married to Hugo for his title, while she brought her desperately needed fortune to him. Hugo is an officer in the British army and brought her along with him to Brussels. The details of the Battle of Waterloo are for the most part seen through the eyes of those who stay behind, but it is after the pair return to England that the story really picks up. Mary falls in love with her gruff, much-older husband, while he does not care much one way or the other for her. There are some rather coarse and shocking moments in this book (I believe it is one of Chesney's earlier efforts) but it is still fun. And when purchasing two books for the price of one, it is hard to feel a loser.