Recent Reads

Well, I had so enjoyed The Girl Who Played With Fire that I couldn't decide what to read next.  This book was one of those books that so engrossed me that I felt like I was pulled into its world for a while and just knew whatever book I chose next would not compare.  I asked my mom whether I should read a similar book (mystery/thriller) or something totally different.  She thought I would be better off choosing a completely different genre, so I took her advice and returned to Georgette Heyer.  I am so glad I did.

Since finishing The Girl Who Played With Fire, I have read two Georgette Heyer books...The Quiet Gentleman and The Convenient Marriage.  I read somewhere that Heyer's books usually have two types of heroines:  the young, naive girl who gets herself into scrapes or the older, wiser, level-headed woman who has been on the shelf slightly too long and has almost gained the label of spinster, and each of these books has one of those types.  Personally, I prefer the older heroine (after all, my second-favorite book ever is Persuasion), so of these two, I preferred The Quiet Gentleman.  The heroine is Drusilla, a twenty-something woman whose character is summed up by common sense and a lack of imagination (so she says).   I loved the hero, Gervase Frant, who has a sweet temper and a backbone of steel.  He gets what he wants never by causing a fuss, but simply by ever so nicely standing up for his rights.  He comes home to claim his rightful title as Earl and has to deal with several potential enemies, including his overbearing step-mother and resentful half-brother.  Someone is trying to eliminate the Earl from the picture, but who is it?

The other book, which I just finished last night, is The Convenient Marriage, whose two main characters are the Earl of Rule and Horatia (Horry...for which nickname one must put aside one's modern sensibilities).  Horatia is the young/naive type heroine who sacrifices herself and offers to marry the Earl in her sister's place because her sister is already in love with another.  I didn't much care for Horry at first, but as she matured in the story she grew on me.  She gets herself into one humorous scrape after another and her husband, who initially marries her only for her name, becomes enchanted with her and works behind the scenes to protect her and extract her from her difficulties.  And I don't think I will spoil the story to say that everything turns out all right in the end.