The Selfless Sister (Signet Regency Romance)

Rating:
Summary: Wow, Another great Regency by Shirley Kennedy
Review: Douglas Wyndham, outcast Lord of Ravencroft, has no desire to wed due to a twenty-five-year old tragedy. He meets Lucinda Linley and knows she is all a man could ask for in a woman. Unfortunately she is visiting at her cousin's home, and that family is part of the family tradedy. Lucinda has found no reason to wed; so she has allowed her sisters to be brought out and wed before her. Now her father with only enough dowry for one daughter gives Lucinda an ultimatum to wed. Again she refuses. Her sister must wed, and Lucinda will take her place as companion to her dreaded aunt. This selfless act brings her to Southfield and under her beastly cousin's roof. The family's tragedy seems to be at the center of Southfield's unhappiness, and the enmity against the Wyndham's is a living thing. Lucinda questions the events while losing her heart to Douglas. There are impediments to their wedding--the lack of a dowry and the old tragedy. Family secrets of both the Linleys and Wyndham also stand in the way. A lovely tale with good twists and bends on the road to romance. The Selfless Sister revolves around love and sacrifice. Shirley Kennedy writes a convoluted tale of the selflessness of love and lovers. An enjoyable romance. I look forward to reading other books by Ms. Kennedy.

Rating:
Summary: Another delight from Shirley Kennedy!
Review: I have read with great pleasure and increasing respect all four of Shirley Kennedy's Regency novels. While keeping within the format of regencies, Shirley has added a sassiness and humor which places her books a notch above. I look forward to the next and the next and the next. . .

Rating:
Summary: Warning! discloses ending
Review: let down by unrealistic behaviour
...
I enjoyed "the selfless sister" a great deal, but must complain about the ending! As a mother myself, I can never imagine that the outrageousness of Edgerton lying about Mariannes wherabouts would be so little examined! Basically, he killed her because at any point that day the next or the next, he could have saved her life by telling someone where she was.

Also, when a life was involved, surely everyone would have been involved in a search party, and as a mother! I would have been searching the attic myself not relying upon the servants to do it! I can't believe that they would just accept as easily as that, when everyone would have been anxious and frantic and surely checking over twice what they had checked before!

That, to me, is the worst and most letting down feature of the book. I hated that it ended like that.

It was also not made much of, when it came to light.

Rating:
Summary: Warning! discloses ending
Review: let down by unrealistic behaviour
...
I enjoyed "the selfless sister" a great deal, but must complain about the ending! As a mother myself, I can never imagine that the outrageousness of Edgerton lying about Mariannes wherabouts would be so little examined! Basically, he killed her because at any point that day the next or the next, he could have saved her life by telling someone where she was.

Also, when a life was involved, surely everyone would have been involved in a search party, and as a mother! I would have been searching the attic myself not relying upon the servants to do it! I can't believe that they would just accept as easily as that, when everyone would have been anxious and frantic and surely checking over twice what they had checked before!

That, to me, is the worst and most letting down feature of the book. I hated that it ended like that.

It was also not made much of, when it came to light.

Rating:
Summary: A Regency Mystery
Review: Lucinda has stepped back and let her younger sisters marry before her...several times. Now she and her youngest sister are the only two left unmarried, but their parents have been left almost penniless because of the generous doweries they gave their other daughters. They can scrape up enough for one more dowry and they are determined that Lucinda should take it and marry, being the second eldest. But Lucinda knows that her sister, Henrietta, is in love, so she convinces her parents to let Henrietta marry while Lucinda goes in her place as companion to their aunt.

Lucinda finds her welcome a little cold to say the least. The family itself is subdued and a little odd. They all seem to live in horror of a tragedy that they constantly refer to that happened twenty-five years before. They blame their neighbors entirely for the incident and harbor a deep hate for all the Belingtons.

Lucinda escapes the dreary household and her cousin, Edgerton's, iron rule by visiting the beautiful forest at the edge of her cousin's property. There, she sketches birds and takes time to think. But everything is turned topsy turvy when she meets an intriguing and handsome stranger in the woods one day...one Douglas, Lord Belington...

They begin to meet "accidently" on a regular basis and love is beginning to bloom. As Lucinda begins to know Douglas better and know more of the mystery that destroyed two families, she determines to find out what really happened. But she did not count on her cousin's black rage and pure hate. If he should ever learn of her forbidden romance, the consequences would be dire...

This was a lovely romance and the mystery had a surprising conclusion. If you liked this book, check out Shirley Kennedy's other regency romances. She's a great author.

Rating:
Summary: Selfless Indeed
Review: Miss Lucinda Linley has once again been faced with the question of is she going to finally marry now, and make her younger sister (Henrietta) who is in love wait a few more years until her parents can afford another dowry, or is Lucinda going to step aside and allow her sister to use the dowry and marry the man she loves, as Lucinda has so done from her other 5 sisters? Being the age of 26 Lucinda realizes that her chances of finding a good match are comeing close to nothing but she doesn't care because she refuses to wed a man she doesn't love. However when a letter comes from a distant aunt, she sees it as a perfect answer to her problem for her aunt has offered her father (who doesn't want to send either of his daughters to his sister-in-laws) to provide Lucinda with a "more-than-adequate dowry" as long as she stays and entire year. What could be so bad about that? She loves to read and draw birds, and according to her father there are thick woods beside the mansion surely to hold more than enough birds to keep her busy. Of course this statement comes right before a warning of "Be careful. You have never met the likes of Edgerton Linley." her cousin.

Douglas Wyndham, Earl of Belington, is very much a man that keeps to himself. After "The Tragedy" 25 years ago, in which his family member was accused of horrible things and then the family was cut in every home, he has grown with bitterness towards the Linleys but mostly towards Edgerton Linley.

Even though it is forbidden to be close to a Belington, much less secretly meet with one in the woods, Lucinda can not seem to help herself. She is attracted to this oh-so-hansome man is ways she can't understand, whereas Douglas can't understand why he can't stop himself from seeing the only woman he could never have.

Overall this was a great story, very well thought out. The characters were great, the excitment was there, everything was there. Except even though our author showed all strings being tied for our happy couple, she didn't do so with our secondary characters as well. Now don't get me wrong, she doesn't leave us wondering what happened to them, I just thought she was going to show the reunited loves being reunited. Oh well. Like I said it was a great story with all of the characters completly thought out! I greatly recommend this book!

Rating:
Summary: Patchy, but intriguing
Review: Ms Kennedy has here produced a disquieting, serious book. Our on-the-shelf heroine leaves her home to care for an aged relative, and stumbles on a years-old mystery involving a missing child and the repercussions for the family of the alleged murderer. The mystery is skilfully plotted, the minor characters well-drawn and used, but the hero and heroine never quite emerge from their respective roles in the plot - the romance is relegated to the backseat while the hero deals with his social alienation and the heroine solves the mystery.

The mystery is absolutely compelling, however, and Ms Kennedy, despite this somewhat patchy effort, remains one of the better writers in the genre.

Rating:
Summary: The Selfless Sister
Review: This novel had all the ingredients of the gothic genre perfected by Victoria Holt: a beautiful but penniless young lady, Lucinda Linley, goes to become companion to her aunt in a household run by the despotic eldest son; an old tragedy that has haunted her aunt's family and created a rift with a neighbouring family in the county; thwarted lovers... And yet this book does not read as a gothic at all.

The despotic cousin does not inspire fear so much as anger, and one wonders at how he was able to acquire his power over his family without their willing help; and that leads one to ask why they allowed things to become so bad in the first place! The reader's sympathies are fully engaged with Lucinda who has to grit her teeth and bear with the petty tryanny in order not to make matters worse. How I wanted to shake all of Lucinda's female realtives!

Lucinda is an intrepid heroine and I really liked her, but the other characters were a bit two- dimensional. However I liked the fact that while the novel had all the devices of a gothic plot, Shirley Kennedy took a more matter-of-fact approach, that reminded me of Jane Austen's handling of "Northanger Abbey". A good read.