The Further Observations of Lady Whistledown
In this anthology, Lady Whistledown is the thread that ties these four stories together. (Interestingly, it was the duty of Julia Quinn to keep all the details of the characters by the other author’s together, including the details of their intertwining character story lines.–Good job Julia!) The four stories in The Further Observations of Lady Whistledown took place in the winter of 1813, the year the River Thames froze over.
Lady Whistledown, for anyone who hasn’t read Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton Series (what are you waiting for??), she was that Regency series’ gossip columnist extraordinaire. Inevitably, anyone living in the Bridgerton Regency world, who was anyone, wasn’t really someone until they appeared on the pages of Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers.
Suzanne Enoch, I had never read many of her books, wrote the first listed short story entitled “One True Love”. It was a quick read, with a good plot. The main character is Anne, and she has been betrothed for years to her absentee fiancee, Maxmillian (aka Lord Halfurst aka the Marquis of Halfurst) who suddenly shows up at her door to claim his bride when Anne appears in the gossip column of Lady Whistledown. When Lord Halfurst, as Enoch put it, “set eyes on the woman to whom he’d been promised for nineteen of his twenty-six years, his first thought was that he should have come sooner.” She wants Max to court her, he accepts the challenge and proceeds to woo his intended bride. There’s competition and some bumps along the way. Personally, I don’t think I would have put up that much of a fight if a major hottie showed up on my doorstep to claim me. Not, especially, if I lived in 1813!
Karen Hawkins wrote “Two Hearts”, which I thought was a really clever tale of two friends, Royce (a typical rake) and Liz (an eccentric spinster), who have known each other most of their lives. But Royce, who has remained a bachelor, never realized that his bachelorhood was born out of the fact that he already had a steady woman in his life, even if he didn’t happen to sleep with her (like a mistress), or recall that she was in fact–a woman. Liz has maintained that she and Royce will only be friends. Royce finds out that she is being courted by another man and that she is hoping to marry him. Royce panics when he realizes that he will lose his best friend, and especially so when his eyes open up to the possibility that love has been in his grasp all along. Nice.
Mia Ryan wrote “A Dozen Kisses”. The heroine Caroline has been evicted from her home. Her mother is trying to marry her off. She runs into the very man that had her evicted (but she doesn’t know its him!) when she’s hiding at the theater because she is in tears about her situation. Lord Darlington is captivated by her, despite the tears and runny nose, and pursues her. Caroline puts up a small resistance, especially since she has not been heavily courted in the past, and her current beau she cannot stand. He has a lot of obstacles to overcome though, I thought more of the story could have been told, that’s why I was surprised to see it was the shortest one in the book.
The last entry is from Julia Quinn entitled “Thirty-Six Valentines”. I was immediately curious, why so many? Susannah had been humiliated the year before by the Earl of Renminster’s brother when she spent the whole season being courted by the brother, only to have him propose to someone else at the end of the season. So this go round, she is perplexed when the Earl himself seems to be favoring her himself, especially when he had been so opposed to the match between herself and the Earl’s brother all along. One of my favorite scenes was how the Earl procures his titular valentines. I won’t say more, but it was very cute.
Overall, entertaining, and the bits by Whistledown at the beginning of each chapter are hilarious and very witty.
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