Customer Reviews

Lady Allerton's Wager

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I love a good road romance and when it has an original plot like this one and a fantastic, sparkling cast of characters, I really enjoy myself. Beth Allerton is impulsive but idealistic. Marcus Trevithick is a hero with depth. The writing is up to Ms Cornick's usual high standard. I can't wait for the sequel to find out what happens in Kit and Eleanor's romance!

While "Lady Allerton's Wager" may lead you on a romp through the countryside, it's far from an enjoyable one. The plot centers around Beth Allerton's attempts to regain an island stolen from her family years ago by the Trevithick family. Lord Trevithick is the current owner and he seems all too willing to hand it over and try to claim her in the process. Any man who would chase after this flighty, immature brat should have his head examined! Lady Allerton is slightly amusing at best, and highly annoying all the time. Unevenly written, with weak and convenient yet unlikely twists to the plot (many of which aren't resolved), makes this a dull and predictable read.

I have had mixed experiences with Cornick's books. While some of them have been amazing experiences (THE LARKSWOOD LEGACY, and to a lesser extent TRUE COLORS), others have started out well and then rapidly gone downhill.

Unfortunately LADY ALLERTON'S WAGER (part of a Mills & Boons gift set) is one of these. The premise is unusual. A jaded Earl who is short of cash (having inherited from his grandfather who let things slight) runs into a lovely young Cyprian, or so he thinks. She offers him a wager for one toss of the dice - if she loses, he will win her favors for free; if he loses on the other hand, she wants an island from him. It becomes obvious both to the Earl and to us (the readers) that the Cyprian is no Cyprian, but a Lady. What is she doing at the Cyprians' Ball, and why does she want the island so badly?

Both questions are answered fairly early in the book, except that the Earl decides that he does not believe her reasons for wanting the island. This is partly because there is a long-running family feud between his family and hers; partly because he believes what his man of business says. [And this part of the plot drops out too easily as well, as does a certain secondary character who will reappear in a sequel].

I won't go into details, except to say that the subsequent plot setup strained my credulity considerably. And I couldn't root for either the heroine (remarkably immature or naive) or the hero (whose behavior ranges from dishonourable when he reneges on the wager initially to boorish when he accuses the heroine of having cheated him financially). Cornick is capable of so much more, that this book felt all the more rushed and half-baked.

If you enjoy a road romance (or an island romance), you may like this book. If you want a plot that makes sense, and characters that act consistently, you might want to pass this book up.

This ludicrous but enjoyable little farce is a regency romance set in 1813, towards the end of the Napoleonic wars and while Britain and America were at odds in the "War of 1812".

The story begins at the (very fictional) "Cyprians' ball" and the first sentence of the book gives an idea of the humour which is to run through it:

"The Cyprians' Ball was scarcely an event that featured on the social calendar of any of the debutantes of the ton, though more than one bitter chaperon had observed that it was the only place outside of the clubs where all the eligible batchelors could be found."

Two prominent families from Devon in the English West Country - the Mostyns and the Trevithicks - have been at daggers drawn since they backed opposite sides in the British civil wars nearly two centuries earlier. A couple of generations before this story, a notorious head of the Trevithick family - nicknamed the "Evil Earl" - had obtained Fairhaven, a small but fertile (and equally fictional) island in the Bristol Channel, from the Mostyn family in dubious circumstances.

Lady Elizabeth (Beth) Allerton, nee Mostyn, has been brought up on romantic legends giving the Mostyn family side of how the "Evil Earl" stole Fairhaven from her grandfather. It has been her lifelong ambition to reclaim the island. Beth is a young and wealthy widow, having married the elderly Sir Frank Allerton when she was seventeen: the marriage was reasonably happy but brief, her husband behaving to her more like an indulgent parent than a spouse, but he died within a few years of their wedding.

Having been left sufficient funds to do so by her late husband, Beth Allerton tried twice to buy back Fairhaven Island, but the old earl was not interested. When he died, she was about to make a new offer to buy the island - when at the start of this book chance presents her with an opportunity to win the island through an outrageous wager ...

Marcus Trevithick, a handsome man in his late twenties who has recently inherited the earldom from his grandfather the "Evil Earl," is trying to sort out the mess into which his predecessor had allowed the estates to fall during his latter years. He isn't ready to take a wife but has an eye for a pretty girl, hence his attendance at the "Cyprians' ball" a masked event supposedly for the demi-mondaines rather than respectable women. Seeing the most beautiful woman in the room dancing with Lord Mostyn, the head of the family who are the arch rivals of his own, he is unable to resist asking her for the next dance. He has no idea what will follow ...

Quite nonsensical but good fun, with a cast of mostly likeable characters and some good use of humour. Not a book for the politically-correct - at one point Beth Allerton's obsession with regaining Fairhaven makes her behave in ways which are so over-the-top that the infuriated Marcus Tevithick threatens to put her over his knee.

There are two romantic sub-plots affecting other members of the Trevithick and Mostyn families, and one of these in particular is left hanging at the end. That story, the romance between Marcus's sister Eleanor and Beth's cousin Christopher (Kit) Lord Mostyn, is told in the sequel, The Notorious Marriage.