Ilze

Wonderful book!  Right up there with the best of Georgette Heyer (and the author owes a huge debt to Jane Austen).

Caroline Fortune is, as her besotted suitor tells her at the end of the book, "the dearest, warmest, most generous and good-natured, amusing, entrancing and bewitchingly beautiful woman in creation."  Her father has squandered all the family's money, so Caroline has to make her way in the world on her own, first as the companion to a bad-tempered, selfish old b**tch, who won't even give her a couple of days off to go to her father's funeral, and then as the long-lost but much-loved niece of her mother's sister Selina and her hilariously obtuse but infinitely kind husband, the village rector Dr. Langland. Along the way she encounters an entertaining collection of characters right out of Regency Central Casting (but not a single duke, thank goodness), although the hero's character is a unique creation, and he is positively scrumptious. Lovely descriptions of Brighton and Bath, and the little village of Wythorpe, where most of the novel takes place, came alive in my mind as I was reading. My only quibble with the book is that there are a few too many convenient, just-in-time coincidences but hey, this is fiction and if the story needs them, so be it.