Emma Wildford, seeing how her society-addled mother ruined her parents’ marriage, decided to live with her practical-thinking father when her family split apart. But now that Emma is interested in marriage, she finds her father jealous of the idea. Both the sensible Captain Ringan and the opportunistic Mr Critchley show interest in Emma, confusing her, and so she turns to her friend Mrs Fry. With Mrs Fry’s help, Emma looks past the immediate pleasures the Regency period to visit the miserable female inmates of Newgate Prison, showing her just how lucky she is, and who she really has feelings for.
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I actually found this book in my library while looking for Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Marquez's book was out, for the curious, so I picked up this one). I've never read a book by Manners before, but I really enjoyed this. Some characters are flat, but the majority are flush, amusing, and heartening to read. The romance(s) are all interesting, and have a wonderful quality of reality. Manners does little to hide the underside of the Regency, which I love, because it's different from the typical comedy of manners (no pun intended) we usually see in Regency Romance. A lot of themes are tackled in this book: paternal piety, loyalty, love, murder, prisons, etc; altogether, they make an entertaining and thoughtful read that made me feel better for reading it, which is rare these days.
