Fairchild

I randomly picked this up on an Audible sale or something very long ago and left it untouched for years. Boy, am I glad I picked it up now. What a hidden gem amongst Regency romances!

The story is sort of Mansfield Park meets North and South. Sophy Prescott is the illegitimate daughter of an earl, Lord Fairchild, and his children's governess. After an accident causes her mother's death, she is taken in by her father and his family and grows up in his magnificent country estate. When an accident throws her in the way of Tom Bagshot, a wealthy merchant who lives in the district but who is shunned by Sophy's family because of his lowly social status, she can't resist pretending to be more than she is.

This book isn't without its flaws: a lot of overly convenient plot devices, machinations that don't quite make sense, and some minor loose ends that never really get tied up. However, I appreciate that it steered clear of so many romance novel tropes while also creating a thoroughly enjoyable love story that I'm pretty willing to overlook those flaws.

For one, Sophy's family never mistreats her. Her half-siblings take her into their fold, and although Lady Fairchild is prejudiced against her at first (somewhat understandably so, since she is a daily reminder of her husband's infidelity), she eventually warms up to her and seems to treat her as a child of her own. This may not be the most realistic, but I'm also pretty tired of Cinderella stories where our poor protagonist is trampled all over by everyone, only to be noticed and saved by the hero at some point.

For another, our hero Tom is not a dashing duke, an entrancing earl, or a lascivious rake. His parents are from the merchant class themselves; his father, having made his fortune, attempts to bring Tom up as a gentleman, a mold that he constantly chafes against and which he eventually gives up all together at a crisis point, when his father finally relents and allows him to seek his own fortune aboard merchant ships. He returns as a wealthy shipowner himself, and has no desire to ingratiate himself with the snobby aristocratic Fairchilds who live in the same neighbourhood.

It's also fairly rare that we get a “third party”, Capt Alistair Beaumaris, who is the cousin of the Fairchilds and a suitor for Sophy. Instead of just being a random prop piece that only exists to somehow benefit of Sophy and Tom's budding relationship, Alistair is an actual character of his own, wanting to marry Sophy for somewhat self-centered reasons but at the same time also actually feeling attracted to her. It's no surprise that he turns out to be the hero of the second book in this series.

The ending was also refreshing and satisfactory. We don't get any super amazing dramatic moment where Tom is somehow accepted by the Fairchilds and everyone lives happily ever after. In fact, Sophy does have to make an awful choice between her beloved family and Tom. She chooses Tom, but in so doing she does break off from Lord and Lady Fairchild. There are consequences, and even though things appear optimistically on the mend by the end, we don't get some perfectly saccharine reunion scene. I liked that there were actually consequences to their decision, especially when both of them came from such checkered backgrounds.

Having read some fairly heavy books in the past few days, this light-hearted romance hit the spot because it doesn't take itself too seriously, steers clear of tired tropes, and was just generally such a breath of fresh air. Strongly recommended for fans of the Regency romance genre, especially if you're looking for something that tries to do things a little differently.