A very merry tale of romance that’s perfect for the holiday season.
A highborn lady must marry outside her class to save her family’s finances in Matthews’ (The Matrimonial Advertisement, 2018, etc.) latest Victorian romance.
Sophia Appersett is an appealing choice for a man looking for a wife. She’s smart, beautiful, sensible, and has what’s seen as the proper pedigree. Edward “Ned” Sharpe is an eligible bachelor—a self-made man with a substantial fortune but an unfortunate lack of experience in dating nobility. Ned follows poor advice in a gentleman’s etiquette book and manages to appear sullen, staid, and altogether disinterested in Sophie. As a result, she assumes that they have nothing in common and makes a move to end their courtship. But then Sophie catches a glimpse of the man beneath the mask and realizes that perhaps Ned feels things more deeply than she suspected. She proposes that they try to speak honestly with each other and encourages Ned to bring his parents to the Appersetts’ estate in Derbyshire over the holidays. Matthews includes all the required elements of a cozy English Christmas and a classic Victorian love story. Ned is the strong, silent type, and Sophie is predictably unaware of her own appeal; their budding romance is challenged by external forces, not the least of which are their respective parents: Sophie’s father is determined to modernize his estate and has spent both his daughters’ dowries in the quest for advancement, while Edward’s mother visibly disapproves of Sophie and her perceived snootiness. Yet the spirit of the season wins out, and the couple’s future is never really in doubt. Matthews’ novella is full of comfort and joy—a sweet treat for romance readers that’s just in time for Christmas. As in her previous historical romance novels, Matthews addresses hot topics in Victorian society; this time around, the theme is adaptation, as Sophie invites members of differing social classes to the Christmas celebration: “We’re part of the modern age,” Sophie tells her sister. “We must change along with it or be left behind in the dust.”
A very merry tale of romance that’s perfect for the holiday season.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9990364-7-1
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Perfectly Proper Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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