Finally, I see in this third novel by newcomer Kathryn Caskie the growth and experience needed in her becoming a fine regency author. Hanging in there, I’ve read all three now and consider this a comparable effort to her exceptional debut of RULES OF ENGAGEMENT after the less than stellar LADY IN WAITING.
In sticking with her successful premise of having the two great aunts, Letitia and Viola providing additional comic relief to the antics of the primary character, Meredith Merriweather, as she tries to produce a lady’s guide to avoiding heartache by a rake, the author loads up on plenty of ammunition and delivers this with an amusing bang! Meredith is a wonderful heroine; one that the reader will genuinely like, understand and feel sympathy for after having stood up and borne the embarrassment of having been jilted at the alter and ruined by a rake that had no principles of having ruined an innocent in his search for a wealthy heiress.
Almost as therapy in overcoming her heartbreak and shame, Meredith set out to compile a guide in proving her theory of a rakes behavior and save other innocents from a similar fate. Meredith herself was determined to never again fall prey to a rake, had set her cap for the very staid and respectable Mr. Chilton, who’d been courting her for some time. As the final chapter was looming closer she had selected the most notorious rake and scoundrel as her ‘scientific experiment’, Lord Alexander Lansing. Though, she’d heard that he professed to have turned over a new leaf and was now ‘reformed’ she wanted to prove, once and for all that ‘once a rake, always a rake!’
In an amusing scene of having had the very lovely, Meredith Merriweather fall into his very lap; and, having had his fathers ultimatum to reform and marry, or be cut off of funds; Alex was about to prove Meredith’s theory wrong, and prove to her that a rake could reform and only a rake would make her the very BEST husband and not the very staid and respectable Mr. Chilton.
___ Skillfully, Caskie has taken an old and used theme of the ‘reformed rake’ and given it a fresh new slant in this delightful latest novel in the Featherton sisters’ saga. The writing is well done, well researched and if I spotted perhaps a couple of instances that I thought leaned towards a phrase or two that seemed out of context with the period, I can overlook it for the pure enjoyment of a very entertaining read. With a background of colorful and fun secondary characters on top of the very well-matched lead couple, Caskie scores big with this latest entry!
