Customer Reviews

Marriage Mart

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

 

 

If you are a fan of Regency novels, FIND A COPY OF THIS BOOK. It is one of the best in the genre.

This is an extremely well-written account of the role and status of women during the Regency period. Ms. Clarke skillfully weaves socio-economic and psychology lessons into a very affecting book. These are characters you grow to care about. Even the "not so nice" characters are presented in full dimension. No cookie-cutter bad guys here.

It is one of the few in the genre that I have re-read.

I agree with all three of the reviews--while the writing was very good, the characters' study was keen, the romance definitely was not the usual "clean" and "harmless" regency romance. This story was a darker relationships of the marriage mart of that period. It offered all sorts of scenarios: marriage of convenience, loveless marriage, abusive marriage, by-blows, mistresses, and scandals. I wouldn't say these cases didn't exist even in the sweet, innocent Jane Austen era, but perhaps was these realities that made it harder to read. I myself found it was admirable for Ms. Clark to bring out these issues, but I sometimes liked to read romantic stories for the purpose of getting away from the realities... Hopefully this review offered some guidance for certain readers in the certain moods.

I enjoyed Fanny, by this author, quite a bit. I was expecting something similar with this novel, a sweet, clean romance. The writing was still good, but that's where the similarities ended. This story was far from sweet or clean. If you don't mind the hero having mistresses while married to the heroine, or the author using a sexually depraved scene to show you how evil the villian is, this book might work for you. But this was definitely not the book for me!

This is a well-written, interesting, and unusual love story.

On the surface, it is a standard Regency marriage of convenience story: Beautiful young heroine marries rich handsome lord in marriage arranged by Father. But almost immediately, the author takes you into the complex, emotional life of this young woman. The story takes some unexpected twists and turns on the way to true love.

It develops into an in-depth character study of the heroine, the hero, and several of the supporting characters as well, which is amazing in such a short book.

All of the characters seem familiar, but none of them are quite the stock characters you expect.

It is one of my keepers that I re-read and it made me want to find other books by this author.