The Fortune Hunter

Lovers and Ladies #5

by Jo Beverley

Amy de Lacy tries to catch a rich husband to support her and her sisters, when she falls for a man too poor to provide for her and too proud to love her

Genres: Romance, Historical Romance, Regency, Historical, Regency Romance, Clean Romance, Historical Fiction

190 pages, Paperback

First published December 14, 1992

About the author

Mary Josephine Dunn was born 22 September 1947 in Lancashire, England, UK. At the age of eleven she went to an all-girls boarding school, Layton Hill Convent, Blackpool. At sixteen, she wrote her first romance, with a medieval setting, completed in installments in an exercise book. From 1966 to 1970, she obtained a degree in English history from Keele University in Staffordshire, where she met her future husband, Ken Beverley. After graduation, they married on June 24, 1971. She quickly attained a position as a youth employment officer until 1976, working first in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, and then in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire.

In 1976, her scientist husband was invited to do post-doctoral research at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. When her professional qualifications proved not to be usable in the Canadian labour market, she raised their two sons and started to write her first romances.

Moved to Ottawa, in 1985 she became a founding member of the Ottawa Romance Writers’ Association, that her “nurturing community” for the next twelve years. The same year, she completed a regency romance, but it was promptly rejected by a number of publishers, and she settled more earnestly to learning the craft. In 1988, it sold to Walker, and was published as "Lord Wraybourne's Betrothed". She regularly appears on bestseller lists including the USA Today overall bestseller list, the New York Times, and and the Publishers Weekly list. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Golden Leaf, the Award of Excellence, the National Readers Choice, and a two Career Achievement awards from Romantic Times. She is also a five time winner of the RITA, the top award of the Romance Writers Of America, and a member of their Hall of Fame and Honor Roll.

Jo Beverley passed away on May 23, 2016 after a long battle with cancer.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have never read a Jo Beverley novel. I'm not sure this was her best work. This is a really short regency period historical romance. Published in 1991, this is a part of a series. However, it can be read as a stand alone.
Amy's family has fallen on hard times. She is determined to marry a very wealthy man so her entire family can live in the style they once did, and her sisters will have dowries so they can also marry well.
But, Amy meets Harry after getting caught up in a rain storm and seeks shelter.
Harry knows his family wishes he would start to think of marriage. He thinks Amy would be perfect even though they only just met. He proposes marriage, but Amy bluntly tells him no because he isn't rich enough. There is a terrible argument and they part hating each other.
Now, they must each travel to London for the season.
Amy must learn that her family must find their own way and .not use her to restore to them the wealth she so Desperately wants for them.
Amy's family seems nice in a way, but they also don't seem very warm.
Harry is just hurt, and doesn't want Amy to marry for money. Even if she doesn't find love with him.
I agree that Amy was irritating. Even at the very end, she doesn't seem to have completely let go of her goal despite the fact she loves Harry and he loves her, she puts her ungrateful family first. I think Amy was very lucky to have Harry, I just wonder if she really appreciated him as much as she should have.
This novel is rated PG. mild language. Overall a C.

[HR-ML · Rating 3 out of 5]

Regency. This was an early novel by the late, great Jo
Beverley. Kisses only.

This had 4 romance couples:
1) Amy + hero
2) sis Beryl + man
3) Nell (London friend)+ man
4) friend Clyta + man

Middle dtr of a late baronet, Amy, was stunningly beautiful.
Men stopped/ stared and their jaws dropped. Amy limited
fam. expenditures to preserve what they had. Amy obsessed
on marrying a wealthy man to get her family out of debt,
provide for her 3 sibs + aunt Lizzie. During the story her
focus was on 3 men, one a banker old enough to be her Da!

Amy devised an accident, to require being rescued by one
of these 3 men. Then she endured a cold rain, with her old
horse & pony cart. And sought refuge at an old farm house
(instead of her original plan).

She met dreamy, kind Harry at said farm house. Long story
short, she later, publicly rejected his proposal because he
had insufficient wealth, for Amy. He replied by calling
her a bitch (unlikely during this era). The author, if IIRC,
hinted he was a titled man.

Amy became obnoxious with her obsession with having a
wealthy man. She did not recognize herself. Fancy clothes
etc did not satisfy her. Amy needed to adjust her attitude.
I realize Amy had good intentions for her family, but she
clumsily declared only she of the 3 sisters could attract a
mate. Conceited much? Frankly, Harry deserved a better,
less calculating lady.

My fav scene: Amy and family enjoying real tea!!!

[Korynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed this Regency romance more despite the closing circle of love in which every available male in the books is eventually a subject of his own novel in which he meets his unknown beloved and falls in love with her. This book introduces Amy de Lacy, a fabulously beautiful girl who is nobility fallen on hard times. This has made her a bit bitter, being the only practical member of a very impractical family. Amy decides give her family an opportunity for suitable finances by becoming a fortune hunter and ensnaring a rich man. In the end the story is really about a man who can override a woman's compulsion for self-mortification through an misinterpretation of duty. In other words, Amy decides she'll throw away her first fish, the one she really likes and is mildly rich, in hopes of casting her net for someone who can clear up her family's debt overnight (which is, of course, totally foolish bogus reasoning and ruins the book). Luckily, the man saves her from herself (or her need to believe that she doesn't deserve happiness).

[Lynn Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first when I saw the “old school” prompt, I immediately thought of my stash of 20+ year old historicals that I’ve picked up at various used bookstores. Even though some of these older historicals can contain some problematic plot points at times, I can deal with problematic reads as long as they’re written well. Sadly, the ones I picked up just weren’t. One had a way too sunny approach to enslaved people, while another gave the heroine a delightful (ahem) choice between a sullen rapist and an alpha hero who lived for putting her down. Hard pass.

After these false starts, I decided to switch gears to “old school” Regency, and I picked up one of Jo Beverley’s trads from the early 90s. While The Fortune Hunter lacks the polish and depth of some of her later historicals, it’s still an enjoyable read. The heroine drove me batty at times, but there’s a sweetness to this tale that made me very happy to see the couple in question get their HEA.

In this novel, Amy de Lacy’s father has died, and upon his death, she and her siblings learn that they have been left in poverty. This is a plot point I remember coming across in many Regency trads, but it’s been a while since I read one and I’d forgotten how often Regency dads in 90s novels had a bad head for finances.

At any rate, the eldest daughter of the house, Beryl, is acknowledged by all to be both shy and retiring, as well as possessed of only average looks. The next sibling down, Amy (don’t you dare call her Amethyst), is quite the opposite. She is so good-looking that pretty much any man who sees her all but swoons at her feet. She is also far from being shy and retiring, feeling free to jump into any given situation with both feet. Amy has been the self-appointed head of economization in the de Lacy household, and now she is determined to be the one who will land a rich husband and save the family.

This is a partial review. You can find the complete text here: https://allaboutromance.com/april-tbr...

[Corduroy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Premise: Amy de Lacey is the unusually beautiful second daughter of a gentry family that has fallen on extremely hard times. Realizing that her family is essentially unable to grapple with the financial realities required of them, Amy decides that she'll have to trade her beauty for a fortune and get married to a very rich man.

While making her first foray into fortune hunting, Amy encounters a young gentleman (Harry Crisp) who is charming and handsome and well-to-do, but not massively rich enough for her, things ensue.

What I liked: the prose. Some of the historical details. Some of the side characters. Up until the halfway point, I thought it was pretty good. I'm a big fussy stickler for prose in historical romances, so... the prose is really good, by my standards.

What I didn't care for: the plot driving tension is supposed to come from the fact that Amy must marry a very rich man who is willing to restore her family's fortunes, but secretly wishes she could marry young Harry Crisp instead. That's fine, but there are a couple of things that did not work at all for me. First, Harry just blows through her objections that her family is very poor. Several people are like "Money isn't everything" to her, but Amy's family are legitimately poor, they have no servants, virtually no money, and have to ration food. It isn't like they have to be careful about buying new hats, they're totally broke. There are also some poignant repercussions of this poverty: Amy is beautiful enough to attract a husband even without a dowry, but her two sisters are not. To remain unmarried, if you wished to marry, as a woman of this time, was not a minor inconvenience. It often meant that you had no money or power of your own, that you would spend the rest of your life as a hopefully beloved, but often barely tolerated hanger-on in someone else's household. Basically I felt like Amy's predicament - marry for money to solve her family's problems, or marry for love and abandon them to their fate - was quite hard to solve. I was curious how the author was going to solve it. (I feel like what follows is not actually a spoiler - I mean, you've read a romance novel before, right? But I will tag it anyway.) But then I realized that the author wasn't really going to solve it. There is some deus ex machina rearranging of the pieces on the board at the very end, but I found it unsatisfying. Amy neither achieves her goal - marry to sacrifice herself but save her family - nor grapples with the consequences of choosing love over money. The problem just evaporates.

I also disliked how cruel Harry was to Amy about her need to marry for money. When they first meet, they have a pretty cute dynamic, but when Amy reveals that she can't marry him because he doesn't have enough money, Harry doesn't even listen to her. He seems to assume that Amy is exaggerating, that her family is not actually that poor, that everything would be find if she left them, whatever. He accuses her of being mercenary and callous, and never seems to realize that she has pretty good reasons for thinking that marrying rich is her only way to help her family. This is never addressed. I thought there was going to be a moment where Harry realized - hey, Amy has good reasons for feeling that she must marry for money! But no.

I also didn't care for the way Harry's friends all become heavily involved in getting him and Amy back together. That sort of thing is just never for me. I also don't like the scenes where characters from previous books in what is apparently a series show up to be extremely happily married all over you. This is probably just me because I am a curmudgeon?

Anyway: prose good, set-up good, it all kind of turns into a much sillier book after that.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Copyright 1991. This is #5 in the series, but can be read as a stand alone. Characters from the other books do make appearances.

Although this isn't JB's best, it's also not the worst. Trope is THE BIG MISUNDERSTANDING & failure to communicate. Also, "love at first sight", or as they say nowadays, INSTALOVE.
The fortune hunter in this offering is actually the heroine! The hero, however isn't the poor good guy. He bears some responsibility for the problems they have to overcome.
Things get wrapped up very smoothly & everyone gets a husband/wife. Except Miss Frogmorton.

[piranha · Rating 1 out of 5]

This apple is rotten to the core.

The heroine, Amy, is stunningly beautiful, but in my assessment also stunningly stupid and conceited, which is deadly, because I don't care whether she ends up happy. Her family has fallen on hard times, and Amy finally (took her way too long) decides she has to sacrifice herself and marry a rich man. To that purpose she does minimal research and decides to fake an accident with her gig in front of a nabob's home. She doesn't make it though because a torrential rainfall causes the (purposely weakened) reins to snap before she gets to the nabob's place. She ends up at a farm where our hero Harry happens to be alone, engaged in erotically trying to repair an automaton (not even really kidding), his two friends being out hunting.

So Amy spends time alone with him (uh oh), only covered in a blanket (uh oh). They're getting on pretty well, except Amy becomes sharp every time he says something she finds even mildly disagreeable (and there are many such things). She is surprised by that because she considers herself the most moderate of people (I see no evidence of that anywhere; she has a quick, violent temper pretty much any time something rubs her wrong). When she washes her clothes, she somehow forgets all the underwear and only does the dress (how stupid can you get even when discombobulated?). He takes her to another farm to stay the night and rides off to inform her family.

There he gets the impression she is Cinderella and her family use her and don't really care about her (he's mistaken). He's not poor himself, but he's the heir to his father's title and money, he just has a generous allowance for now. But his father is not well, and so Harry has started to think of marriage, and his thoughts quickly jump to Amy possibly being a good option because hey, she's there, no reason to hit London, and whoa, she's naked under the blanket. Forgive me for not cheering that romantic notion. Amy isn't smart enough to actually find out for sure about the money situation, she's just guessing, while we find out when we're in his head space that he could make her family's life considerably easier even now. But Amy generally won't take temporary charity of any kind, while trading her youth and beauty for an immediate windfall (hoped for but never assured because Amy doesn't do research) is apparently alright. Fine thinking, Amy; all 4 of your brain cells must have fired at once there.

A couple of days later Harry visits Amy and proposes, and she not only refuses him, but becomes immediately rude when he asks why and suggests maybe they could take some time to get to know each other better. She finally tells him that he's simply not rich enough, he calls her a bitch (not likely, Ms Beverley), and she slaps him, hard. Exit Harry & friends stage left.

That was pretty much the end for me. The "bitch" bit was unkind, but she had been excessively rude to him all along, and I thought of her in those terms too; sue me. Harry's shortcomings were a tendency to jump to conclusions, being overly protective, and prating on about the management of her finances, which were really none of his business (though she could have used the advice since she apparently didn't have much of a clue). But her rudeness and conceit outweighed his shortcomings, which could have been handled politely. I mean, again this was stupid -- even if she didn't want to marry him for mercenary reasons, he and his 2 friends were a solid connection, and that could have benefitted her family. Wouldn't that have been worth to hold it together to turn him down with some care for his feelings?

This is really a big reason for me not liking her. Yes, she is willing to sacrifice herself to provide for her family, but in actual fact she doesn't pay much attention to others and how they feel. She completely misses that her sister develops a liking for the nabob (when they finagle an invitation from him) and is bored and consequently again, rude to him, not considering her sister at all. I also can't abide the ongoing stupidity. Sure, research wasn't as easy as today, but if you want to be a mercenary fortune hunter, be competent about it, and check out the guys you want to throw your cap at. She basically goes on as clueless as before once she gets to London for the season.

And then she is unbelievably lucky because everyone around Harry (all the folks who got married in previous books in the series) decides to be nice to her only because Harry is clearly not over her. She redeems herself a little by stepping back from one of her potential conquests because a friend is in love with him, but for me it's too little, too late.

I mean, insta-luv is bad enough without this sort of handicap and I'm rarely into romance where there's nothing else (she could at least have developed more of an interest in steam engines; there was a smidgen of something connecting them there). I wasn't particularly captivated by Harry either, and I don't see this relationship as viable at all.

I'm also not much impressed by all the extra couplings Beverley threw in there, 3 extra ones about which I didn't care, though I could have cared about Beryl and Clyta if we'd had more time with them. Everything was rushed, including Amy and Harry making up. I didn't want them to, no, but if there had been some real growth, maybe. I dunno. If somebody treated me that way I would let the infatuation run its course, not go back for more (he does so several times). It's not primarily that she said no, it's how little she cared about his feelings.

Beverley clearly likes her own heroine and thinks she's great, but all she shows us about her doesn't match that ideal. So yeah, very much not worth it for me.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two,delightful stories. The Fortune Hunter and Deidre and Don Juan. Love Jo Beverley

[Elisabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Certainly not the author's best work! It started off quite well, but the finish left to be desired. The plot made sense in the beginning, there were some funny bits. There were hurt and desire.
Amy was an annoying, even irritating character. However, the way the novel ended was too smooth, too ludicrous, too neat. A pity! Extra half star for the horse

[Winter Astrolabe · Rating 3 out of 5]

See my review here <3 https://ataladyreads.blogspot.com/202...

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jo Beverley is not at the height of her powers, but compared to others, this is a highly enjoyable book. No evil characters here, but fairly predictable outcomes and good writing.

[Gemma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and fairly sweet. The insta-love is strong, but the author pulled it off better than most do, in my opinion.

[Aneca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I have read a lot of trad regencies lately and I have read quite a few of Beverley's novels in the past this is the first time I read her traditional regencies. They are part of a series and due to publishers rights these two that were reprinted now are the last two in the series. Although I am very curious about the secondary couples, that are presumable main characters in previous books, I found that these could be read as standalone so all is well.

The first story was about a young beauty that is decided to marry for money and save her family from poverty. She attracts the attention of a young man that she thinks is not rich enough for her and departs for London to catch a husband. Predictably the young man was in fact very rich and the old banker who is pursuing her ends up falling in love with another. I thought that first proposal scene where Amy gets mad with Harry was a bit too violent and really all his friends had no reason to try and bring them together as they didn't know her all that well. Since this is a light and funny regency Amy eventually accepts Harry's love and all ends well.

Grade: 3.5

Read the Lovers and Ladies edition

[Jane Irish Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several years have passed since their father died, and the de Lacy family has been living in straitened circumstances, when young Jasper buys a winning lottery ticket. All of a sudden it seems that maybe some of their dreams might come true. But Amy, the second oldest, and most sensible, brings them back to their senses. But seeing their disappointed faces, she faces a tough decision. Since she is a beauty, Amy decides she needs to marry a fortune, a rich man who will settle dowries on her sisters, and help her brother keep his estate. But on her first attempt, things go badly awry, leading to a meeting with Harry Crisp, and the beginning of a series of misunderstandings.

Excellent book. Enjoyable, believable characters; in a believable past world, acting as they would have then. Highly recommended.

[Jen Selinsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faced with poverty, two younger siblings, and an older sister, who is doomed to become a spinster, beautiful Amy DeLacy determines that she must marry a rich provider to help her family get out of debt. When her attempted plans to seduce the rich Mr. Own Staverly go wrong, she finds herself being rescued by young and handsome Harry Crisp. When Amy refuses Harry’s marriage proposal because he does not have enough money to support her family, she finds herself going to London to socialize with the elite. Will Amy marry for money, or will her feelings for Harry eventually overshadow her original plan?

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really disappointed in this book. I don't think the author did a very good job accurately portraying this time period. There were so many times I just wanted to shake some sense into the main character. I wasn't happy about how the two love interests were so mean to each other and then all of a sudden end up together. The plot just didn't intrigued me like some of the other books in this series. I am glad it was a clean romance, something you have to be careful with from this author.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice read. Short and sweet. Heroine thinks she has to sacrifice all for her family (not sure where the thoughts come from) and because she's the pretty one, she figures she has to marry pots of money so the others don't have to. How she arrives at these and other conclusions is never really explained, but it's an entertaining story nonetheless. I liked it a lot.

[Mary Lauer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is okay. I don't get why they got so mad at each other in that fight where she refuses him and he gets so insulted. She was honest, and he gets all offended and then insults her. I am glad it all worked out, but I didn't understand their problem.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The follow-up to my beloved Emily and the Dark Angel.

[Sylvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Regency

[Diva · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice one. I like Jo Beverley.

[Agnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

great read

[Anneceleste · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unbelievably irritating heroine.