Miss Lacey's Last Fling [Paperback]

Candice Hern (Author)

Book Description

Series: Signet Regency Romance | Publication Date: February 6, 2001

Rosalind Lacey is a woman with a mission. Having sacrificed her youthful opportunities to family obligations, she is ready to make the most of her long-postponed London season. Her free-spirited Aunt Fanny is just the woman to show a girl all the nice, and naughty, things London has to offer. She starts with Max Davenant, rake extraordinaire.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Signet (February 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451201612
• ISBN-13: 978-0451201614
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #758,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Candice Hern is the award-winning author of historical romance novels set during the English Regency, a period she knows well through years of collecting antiques and fashion prints of the era. She travels to England regularly, always in search of more historical and local color to help bring her books to life, and prides herself on the detailed research that goes into each novel. Her books have won praise for their "intelligence and elegant romantic sensibility" (Romantic Times) as well as "delicious wit and luscious sensuality" (Booklist). Candice's award-winning website (www.candicehern.com) is often cited for its Regency World pages, where readers interested in the era will find an illustrated glossary, a detailed timeline, illustrated digests of Regency people and places, articles on Regency fashion, research links, and much more. The website also provides readers with more information on all Candice's books, including excerpts and a look "behind the scenes" of each novel. You can also find Candice on FaceBook and Twitter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lovely romp, February 18, 2001

By 

[e-mail] (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Miss Lacey's Last Fling (Paperback)

Miss Rosalind Lacey, under the impression that she is dying of the same disease that killed her mother, decides to go to London for one last fling. Flings have been few and far between in her life, as she has spent the bulk of her youth looking after her family. If her life is to be cut short, she reasons, then why not flout society's strictures and have a good time, tasting all the things she's missed?

Max Devenant is wealthy, aristocratic, rakish and bored. His life has been the same year in and year out since he was eighteen. When he meets Rosalind he is delighted by her lust for life. Before he realises it, he is seeking her out at balls, and missing her when she's not there. Ms Hern has created two characters who have a lot to offer each other - Max can give Rosalind the experience she craves, and she can give him a fresh perspective on life.

The plot is fast-paced and well thought out. Ms Hern's style is nothing out of the ordinary, but is very smooth to read and is highly appropriate to the comedy of the book. Sexual tension between Max and Rosalind is quickly established and maintained throughout, and there are some very sexy scenes.

The biggest achievement of "Miss Lacey's Last Fling" is in the appeal of Rosalind Lacey. Here we have a heroine who loves life and seeks excitement, but without coming across as silly or selfish. She deserves this fling, and we feel her desperation as she contemplates what she believes is her imminent demise. The secondary characters - Aunt Fanny and Rosalind's father - are also well drawn.

Ms Hern has taken a very bleak premise and turned it into a lovely romp. A keeper.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Miss Lacey's Wild Ride Is This Season's Treat, July 2, 2001

By 

C. Gilson (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Miss Lacey's Last Fling (Paperback)

This is a gloriously satisfying tale by an author who never fails to charm, in which a dutiful doormat of a young woman twists her life by its tail and transforms herself into one of the Regency period's most delightful and compelling heroines.

Rosalind Lacey at 26 is a country mouse from Devonshire with a dry twig of a father, a life sacrificed to chores, and the sudden diagnosis that she's dying of epilepsy.

Instead of shriveling up and blowing away, "Rosie" resolves to get a life (albeit short) that will finally be a merry one. She sets off for London with a list of objectives revolving around one, and only one, social Season in London, with all of the dizzying blandishments she has only fantacized. As her mentor, she chooses her sly, superbly-connected Auntie Mame--Lady Fanny Heatherington. Fanny treats Rosie to an historically-correct makeover (with an LOL French hairdresser) that turns the drab country mouse into a stunning fashionista, then introduces her docile neice to Society--the social whirl of balls, theater, and an army of rapacious rakes capable of filling her waning days with ardor and passion.

Among the newly-dazzling Rosie's admirers, the most frustrating is Byronically handsome, jaded, and melancholy Max Devenant, so exquisitely bored with the ladies he's already sampled, life has lost all promise. Max becomes smitten with Rosie, who practically whoops with glee as she takes the reins in her own gloves and races her carraige through Mayfair, makes the crimson-faced bluenoses sniffing for scandal faint from her antics , samples champagne at Daffy's and does illicit gambing on Jermyn Street.

Then Miss Lacey sees a London doctor to help with one of the "symptomatic" headaches of her fatal disease and discovers- with shock and a mounting horror- that it's nothing but a bloody great hangover. It seems that Miss Lacey has been misdiagnosed. She has a full life ahead to accept the consequences of her ribald life and her toying with the peripatetic Max...

Ms. Hern is a delightful writer, socially perceptive and witty in the language of the era (e.g. "that fatuous tulip Oswald"). You will feel all the wrenching humor of Rosalind Lacey's metamorphosis and enjoy unexpected wrinkles in this clever story that manages to be completely beguiling to the last page and leaves you wanting more.

Eagerly awaiting Ms. Hern's next fling!

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally! A return to the Regency classic!, April 20, 2001

By 

S. W. (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Miss Lacey's Last Fling (Paperback)

Candace Hern's Regency novels have always charmed, but this one is special. It's an old plot -- rake reformed -- but Hern breathes new life into it with Rosalind and Max. Die-hard Regency readers require historical accuracy in their romances, and this one will meet their highest standards. Unfortunately, the genre seems to be a dying art. If more authors wrote at this level, perhaps that would not be the case. This one is delightfully romantic. A beautiful book.