Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Sweet and Twenty by Joan Smith

Sweet and Twenty
Joan Smith
Fawcett Regency Romance, 1979
223 pages

Read For
1000 Regency Challenge
RYOB Challenge

Synopsis:
When the unexpected death of Sir Gerald Monteith placed his wife Melanie and daughter Sara in financial trouble, their only hope was to quickly find a husband for Sara. They thought it would be easy, for she was as beautiful as could be. They hoped her beauty would make up for her lack of brains. The problem was, they didn't know how to look for a man.

Then Aunt Martha and cousin Lillian swept into town and took over the search. Lillian, too, was available for marriage. Soon the crafty Aunt Martha discovered that the handsome and wealthy Anthony Fellows was running for Parliament.

None of them knew a Tory from a Whig. But that didn't stop Aunt Martha. Suddenly, the ladies were involved in a spirited campaign. With so many men around campaigning, they reasoned, husbands could not be far away ....



My Review:
a clever, biting satire of the upper class and politics. The heroine, Lillian, is a smart, though penniless lady who is taken by her matchmaking Aunt to the country, as the Aunt is also matchmaking for her niece, who is, along with her mother, two pretty airheads.


 When the Aunt finds that a wealthy, eligible neighbor is running for office as a Whig, she makes the ladies out to be more avid political followers than they really are. There begins a madcap farce, and the satirical machinations of the author.  
The hero,Matthew Hudson, is the "whipper-in" the Whig party has sent down to help the candidate, Fellowes, who is pretty much as much a Moron as the niece and mother. They were all so stupid, it was in fact sometimes hard to read their dialog as it was cringeworthy in it's stupidity.


The book needed more romance, hence the 3.5 stars, but would still be a unusual change of pace for most Regency fans.


3.5 stars.

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