Someone to Romance

Someone to Romance by Mary Balogh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thirteen years ago, Gabriel Thorne fled England for Boston out of fear, falsely accused of rape and murder. Now he has returned to claim his title before he's officially declared dead and his odious cousin Manley is named the Earl of Lyndale in his place. It's been nearly seven years since his uncle, the previous Earl, died, and Gabriel had been happy to let everyone believe he was dead as well, until a letter arrived from the one person in England he still loved--his aunt's sister--informing him that the would-be heir was planning to evict her from her home, leaving her destitute. So he turned over his prosperous business to his trusted business partner and boarded a ship. But if Gabriel hopes to make things right, he's going to need help. And an aristocratic countess.

Lady Jessica Archer, sister of the Duke of Netherby, has a court of admirers, none of whom have ever tempted her--even the slightest bit--into matrimony. Suddenly, though, at the advanced age of twenty-five, she realizes she no longer wants life to pass her by, no longer wants to punish herself for surviving her family's Great Disaster unscathed, no longer wants to remain unmarried. On the road back to London, she concludes this will be the year she chooses a husband. She just never imagines it'll turn out to be the rich cit she first encounters in an inn when her arrival deprives him of the private dining room he'd already paid for. To win her hand, though, he must prove he sees her, not just her aristocratic persona.

I love these books so much. The characters suffer real, painful hardships, yet the overall atmosphere of the stories is that of being surrounded by warm, loving family. Well-intentioned matchmaking generally goes awry, but everything comes out right in the end.

This delightful series should be read in order, if only to help keep track of the dizzying array of names and titles in the extended Westcott family. The large family tree printed in the beginning of each book comes in very handy, and bookmarking it can be useful if it's been a while since a reader spent time with these characters.

For readers' advisors: character doorway dominates the first half of the book, and then story doorway comes to the fore. References to rape, murder, and attempted murder, but nothing at all depicted in any detail. A handful of mild swear words. Two sex scenes that are steamy but not terribly explicit (mostly description of the removal of the many articles of clothing). The setting is almost entirely London, England, in 1819.

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