Mrs. Mcvinnie's London Season (Signet Regency Romance) [Paperback]

Carla Kelly (Author)

Book Description

Series: Signet Regency Romance | Publication Date: June 5, 1990

Commisioned to help a pretty young woman find a husband in the London Marriage Mart, Jeannie McVinnie, a lovely young woman who shuns marriage for herself, must keep herself from falling for the charms of her charge's dashing uncle. Reissue.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Signet (June 5, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451165772
• ISBN-13: 978-0451165770
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #815,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mrs. McVinnie's London Season, December 18, 1999

By 

Maura Sisson (DC Metro Area) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mrs. Mcvinnie's London Season (Signet Regency Romance) (Paperback)

I received this book as a 'hand-me-down' and I'm now totally hooked on Carla Kelly as an author of Regency Romances. The story is warm, funny, touching, wise and full of suprises. Her characters are delightful.

The very best thing about the book is the sparkling repartee between the witty, fiesty and throughly practical Scots war widow, Mrs. Jeanne McVinnie, and the commanding, much- decorated captain of a warship who heads the household in which she finds herself reluctantly employed as a nanney.

Called back from his command under protest, the sea captain and the equally unwilling Mrs. McVinnie must carry out orders to manage his orphaned niece's debut into Regency London's high society.

Stormy waters result because the diminutive, red-headed Mrs. McVinnie finds herself speaking her mind and standing her ground even though doing so may lead to conflict with impeccable and socially powerful dandy, Beau Brummell -- who it is said could ruin anyone by the least look askance -- and her tall, intimidating employer who is far more accustomed to instant obedience from subordinates he could order whipped or hanged for the smallest hesitation than to negotiating with opinionated Scots nanneys.

I re-read this book frequently and enjoy it more with each reading.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not up to Kelly's usual high standard, June 5, 2007

By 

grerp (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mrs. Mcvinnie's London Season (Signet Regency Romance) (Paperback)

Jeannie McVinnie is a widow who lost her husband Tom to Napoleon's forces a year ago and now resides with her father-in-law, also a veteran, in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. Out of the blue she receives a letter addressed to "Miss Jeannie McVinnie" requesting her presence in London as a chaperone for Larinda, the niece of Captain William Summers of the Royal Navy. Since going to London solves the problem of 1) what to do for the summer and 2) how to extricate herself from her father-in-law's house for a short period, Jeannie goes. And discovers chaos.

Larinda is a first rate snob; her aunt is still less approachable. Larinda's young brother, Edward, considered an invalid, is sneaking out of the house at night to see London. Clare, an illegitimate child no one seems to know what to do with cries all night. And Captain Summers is more used to roaring at underlings than talking to people and is not amused to have the wrong Jeannie McVinnie. The one he had requested was over sixty and useful for keeping high-strung young people in line. Jeannie realizes she's made a mistake in coming and wishes to leave, but then Captain Summers changes his mind when he sees how good she is with Edward and Clare and compels her to stay on as Larinda's chaperone. Hijinks ensue. Attraction arises. And you have a love story.

Unfortunately, it's not a very good love story. I hate to say that about a book of Mrs. Kelly's, but it's true: this is an inferior effort. Many elements of this book are similar to the recent Beau Crusoe - the seasoned naval type, the sad, lonely widow, the introverted child, the unpleasant relatives who come around. Missing only is the shipwreck backstory. As with Beau Crusoe, no one in this household is especially concerned with societal rules. Will and Jeannie sneak around (fairly platonically) in the middle of the night. He enters her bedroom any time he needs to see her. In fact, anyone enters her bedroom any time they have a desire to see her, including old friends from off the street. Larinda and her aunt are happy to acknowledge Jeannie's inferior social status out of snobbery, but no one else, including Beau Brummell and Sally Jersey, see it as anything worth commenting on. Jeannie is the daughter of a doctor from some small place in Scotland. Will, Larinda, and Edward are the progeny of Marquesses. There is no way Jeannie would be considered an appropriate female to shepherd Larinda around London. Jeannie's never even been to London before, in fact.

Anyone who regularly reads Kelly will know her books aren't exactly escapist fare. There is a lot of gritty reality from the Regency/Napoleonic Wars period in them. This one is much the same. Although everyone here is military mad, Kelly takes her readers on a tour through a military hospital where most of the inmates are in pieces and suffering. The maid in the house is an orphan and came from a workhouse. Jeannie takes pity on a blind flower seller whose wares have been tossed around by careless nobs in search of a red rose. But there is a fantasy element here as well, juxtaposed awkwardly with the grit: that one fairly passive woman could enter into a large, dysfunctional household and immediately impact each of its members for the better. This Mary Poppins fantasy doesn't make a whole lot of sense, frankly, firstly because Jeannie is no Mary Poppins. This is a woman who can't bring herself to tell the truth about herself when people she knows very well are maligning her, a woman who can't bring herself to announce who she is to the butler. But her simple down-to-earth Scottishness is supposed to calm the masses here. Within a week. Because that's about how long she stays, and by the end of her stay Edward is no longer housebound, Clare has been embraced by Will, Larinda has realized her own arrogance and fallen for a similar down-to-earth Scot, and Will is largely tamed.

Mrs. McVinnie's London Season unfortunately also lacks a central conflict. For awhile the conflict appears to be Jeannie's entrance into the Ton. The second day she is in town she has a run-in with Beau Brummell and, not realizing who he is, gives him a full dressing down. But this would be a ridiculous central conflict, and after limping around for a bit, it gets medicated and put to bed in a manner anyone can guess. (As a matter of personal preference I would like to interject here that I hate when historical personages such as Beau Brummell and Sally Jersey are used in the manner of a deus ex machina. It's just too too fake.) Very, very late in the book the real conflict rears its head; it's that Jeannie has vowed never to marry military again. But again, this conflict is mediated almost as soon as it arises. So essentially, without a central conflict, this book is about Jeannie making the Summers house a better place one good deed at a time.

My final problem is how pro-military everyone in this book is. MMLS is practically a rah-rah session for the armed forces, everyone is so uniform mad. That Captain Summers is proud of his military service is understandable. But then Edward decides it's the life for him and Larinda falls for a soldier, and despite having lost a spouse to war before, Jeannie decides to risk all again almost out of patriotic duty. Will may very well die in the course of service, and he will be gone more than he will ever be with her, but those concerns are easily swept under the rug. It's hard not to think that this may all look differently to Jeannie when she's got a couple of kids and no husband at home to help rear them.

It would be easy to blame the many problems in Mrs. McVinnie's London Season on its early publication date (1990) and excuse Kelly as not having the stuff yet, but Kelly wrote at least two books before this one that I highly enjoyed, and Libby's London Merchant came out just the following year. I loved that one. I suppose this one must be chalked up as a flawed effort and be done with it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book, but not up to Kelly's usual standards, December 31, 2000

By 

regency reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mrs. Mcvinnie's London Season (Signet Regency Romance) (Paperback)

While still better than your average Regency romance, after reading all the great reviews posted about this book beforehand, I found myself a bit disappointed in this Kelly title. It might've been just a case of unrealistically high expectations, but the fact of the matter is that I just didn't enjoy this book as much as the other Kelly novels I've read (and I am a HUGE Kelly fan). I can't say exactly what it was that didn't quite meet my expectations, the usual Kelly ingredients were present: witty dialogue, independent and intelligent yet vulnerable heroine, an open-minded and gentlemanly but not-without-his-flaws leading male with whom the audience can sympathize, and conflicts that are real (as opposed to the usual superficial ones you often find when dealing with novels about the ton), and not to mention a very adorable little girl. But even given all that, I was never really drawn into the story and found the book difficult to finish, which rarely happens when I'm reading a book by this author.

I'm not trying to deter anyone from reading this book--as said, it's still better than your run-of-the-mill regency and well worth the read, but be forewarned, it's not up to the usual Kelly standards (for that, check out With This Ring--it's GREAT!)