I read and loved The Ladies Guide to Fortune Hunting, so I was super keen to read this one. I even pre-ordered it.
Here’s the blurb …
When shy Miss Eliza Balfour married the austere Earl of Somerset, twenty years her senior, it was the match of the season–no matter that he was not the husband Eliza would have chosen.
But ten years later, Eliza is widowed. And at eight and twenty years, she is suddenly left titled, rich, and, for the first time in her life, utterly in control of her own future. Instead of living out her mourning quietly, Eliza heads to Bath with her cousin Margaret. After years of living according to everyone else’s rules, Eliza has resolved, at last, to do as she wants.
But when the ripples of the dowager Lady Somerset’s behavior reach the new Lord Somerset–whom Eliza knew, once, as a younger woman–Eliza is forced to confront the fact that freedom does not come without consequences, though it also brings unexpected opportunities . . .
This was well-written and I enjoyed the Bath setting and all of the fashion information, not to mention all of the great regency detail. And Melville is a suitably dashing rake (or is he?) and Lord Somerset seems perfect (but is he?). However, I think I still prefer the first novel to this one. Don’t get me wrong this one is still fun and worth reading, but I thought the first one was fabulous (one of my favourite reads from last year)
A review