Customer Reviews

April Lady (Reader's Choice)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I recently picked up the new Harlequin Readers' Choice edition of April Lady, and I have to say I was disgusted by how Harlequin has treated Ms. Heyer's work in this volume. Make no mistake, the story itself has classic Heyer ingenues, gambling debts, gentlemen of the bon ton, and outrageous misunderstandings for which Heyer fans love her writing. It's not my favorite of her books, but it's certainly one of the good ones. It's better, for example, than Powder and Patch, in my opinion. And as such it deserves far better than the shockingly slipshod manner in which it's been treated by Harlequin.

This is book is not only badly edited, it was clearly not even proofread. It's absolutely larded with the worst mistakes I've ever seen in a professionally published book. As is fairly common in this shoddy series of Heyer reissues, quotation marks are missing in many spots, commas are randomly inserted or missing without much sense, and so on. But this particular work suffered far more than other books in the series. Letters are missing from words in many spots. In far too many others, there are spaces inserted into the middle of words. And in still other places strange mispellings cause characters to give each other "cook glances" instead of cool ones, and so on, and on. Certainly Harlequin could have afforded the services of a freelance copyeditor if its own staff were too incompetent to notice such things? Any professional would have been able to clear this up in a few hours' work, it's such a quick read. In fact, any reasonably literate reader could probably have done a better job than this.

Save your money; avoid this two star edition of a four-star book. Find an older copy that treats the story with the care it deserves. Harlequin is clearly "not up to the knocker," as Felix Heathersett might have put it. They deserve credit for reissuing the books, but this just smacks of shoving any old thing out the door, with a complete and utter disrepect for both the reader and the writer.

As far as I can see, no one has mentioned the principal problem with "April Lady": the basic plot is largely a rehash of The Convenient Marriage, with Nell as Horry, Cardross as Rule and Dysart as Pelham.

But the latter, as well as being written first, is a much better book, one of Miss Heyer's finest in fact. And Nell is a drip, which Horry certainly isn't.

Taken by itself on its own merits, of course, "April Lady" is an excellent and entertaining story.

heyer is one of the best writers in this genre.....if you aren't used to old english novels......she uses a lot of the expressions and descriptions of item from that time.....it takes a little getting used to.....but hang in there.....her stories are full of fun and adventure....the unexpected.....and of course romance.......love her romance novels.....not to into her history or detective novels......i read her stories over and over and never get bored......book came as described.....