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A Very Proper Widow
Widowed Vanessa Damery had two young children to raise, a deteriorating estate to improve, and a household full of pseudo-relatives and dependents to placate. She did not need the advent of her late husband’s cousin (and her co-trustee in his estate). And if Lord Alvescot expected gratitude for his interference, well, he’d have to look elsewhere! Regency Romance by Laura Matthews; originally published by Signet
Mass Market Paperback
First published December 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 10, 2019
A title like that - ‘A Very Proper Widow ‘- usually promises just the opposite. And the (paperback) cover adds to the image. So I hopped on. But!
To bring things to perspective, let me advise you to keep the kindle cover in mind and substitute the title with one like ‘How to Get Rid of Parasitic Relatives 101’.
Only the author and the above average ratings made me plod on with this absolutely dreary and mind-numbing read. Sometimes, things perked up and the h/H slowburn takes centre space but the taking the book in toto, I would say I wasted my time.
*Spoilers* As in the blurb, the h is a widow who lets a horde of her parasitic in-laws to descend and then take roots at her home. Just the scenario is enough to make me bilious. The h is depicted as a quietly managing person but I see no evidence of it before the H comes. He’s a stuffy know-it-all himself who feels the widow needs a manly presence to see her through her problems. But she’s highly thankless of this ‘help’ and tells him to not interfere in what’s her domain. I could applaud the sentiment but not her way of dealing with her problems and that’s to let things be.
For instance, she lets her husband’s aunt (amongst others) with grown up (older than her) children stay and finances them all from her personal jointure. The h’s off-book parents also play a role by insisting she do her (Christian) duty as she has more than them! Had the children been young, that would be understandable but not such parasites. The son of this aunt is a cunning wastrel who hopes to marry the h. She knows but looks away with fortitude when he mistreats her horses, endangers lives, condescends over her or even when he’s involved in blackmail. His sister (Louisa) is nice but has her beau (of 12 years and no proposal) staying at the h’s place. All this is highly frustrating! I started feel antsy just thinking of the atmospherics.
The only time I sat up, quite shaken out of this apathy is when Louisa the simple one, the most uninspiring character gives a shocker while out on a nightly sojourn about the house. The H is understandably stunned and quite unable to get back to sleep! His rumination on women and mistresses is again understandable.
So, the relatives are dispatched one by one, romance blooms with jerks and jolts, and the h proves her mettle by being extremely independent - like modern hs she doesn't think that exchanging ILYs automatically means marriage.
Like I said not what I want to read about.
What attracts me to a story is a good romance with either good dramatic angst or fun and fluff. Quite disparate but I also enjoy slow paced traditional regencies as they take you back to a romantic time depicted in a sweet, charming way. So, reading a book with a bunch of uncharitable and most unlikable characters and their lives is but, punishment.
2.15*
To bring things to perspective, let me advise you to keep the kindle cover in mind and substitute the title with one like ‘How to Get Rid of Parasitic Relatives 101’.
Only the author and the above average ratings made me plod on with this absolutely dreary and mind-numbing read. Sometimes, things perked up and the h/H slowburn takes centre space but the taking the book in toto, I would say I wasted my time.
*Spoilers* As in the blurb, the h is a widow who lets a horde of her parasitic in-laws to descend and then take roots at her home. Just the scenario is enough to make me bilious. The h is depicted as a quietly managing person but I see no evidence of it before the H comes. He’s a stuffy know-it-all himself who feels the widow needs a manly presence to see her through her problems. But she’s highly thankless of this ‘help’ and tells him to not interfere in what’s her domain. I could applaud the sentiment but not her way of dealing with her problems and that’s to let things be.
For instance, she lets her husband’s aunt (amongst others) with grown up (older than her) children stay and finances them all from her personal jointure. The h’s off-book parents also play a role by insisting she do her (Christian) duty as she has more than them! Had the children been young, that would be understandable but not such parasites. The son of this aunt is a cunning wastrel who hopes to marry the h. She knows but looks away with fortitude when he mistreats her horses, endangers lives, condescends over her or even when he’s involved in blackmail. His sister (Louisa) is nice but has her beau (of 12 years and no proposal) staying at the h’s place. All this is highly frustrating! I started feel antsy just thinking of the atmospherics.
The only time I sat up, quite shaken out of this apathy is when Louisa the simple one, the most uninspiring character gives a shocker while out on a nightly sojourn about the house. The H is understandably stunned and quite unable to get back to sleep! His rumination on women and mistresses is again understandable.
So, the relatives are dispatched one by one, romance blooms with jerks and jolts, and the h proves her mettle by being extremely independent - like modern hs she doesn't think that exchanging ILYs automatically means marriage.
Like I said not what I want to read about.
What attracts me to a story is a good romance with either good dramatic angst or fun and fluff. Quite disparate but I also enjoy slow paced traditional regencies as they take you back to a romantic time depicted in a sweet, charming way. So, reading a book with a bunch of uncharitable and most unlikable characters and their lives is but, punishment.
2.15*
April 5, 2018
A truly fabulous book. A competent heroine being allowed to stretch in pursuit of her happiness in the wake of the death of her husband and a mansplaining hero in need of reform. He gets it. I loved this book and will seek out more by Matthews.
March 25, 2014
3 1/2 stars. Delightful!
July 31, 2021
Better than expected which, if it sounds like damning with faint praise, kind of is. It's an old category regency romance, featuring a mildly depressed earl who heads over to an old friend's house when it suddenly occurs to him that he should actually be paying attention to the whole "please make sure my widow and minor children are doing okay" aspect of his legal and moral responsibilities. He discovers that the widow seems to know what she's doing, although he's suspicious given that she's also supporting a horde of parasites (all related to her late husband) and just seems resigned to their continuing presence. Over all, it's very light on drama - as other reviews have suggested, the book is primarily focused on getting rid of the parasitic relatives, and the romance feels fairly low-key. There are some slapstick moments where Vanessa's cousin misunderstands how she can get herself married off to the guy who's been sort-of courting her for the last decade. I did really appreciate how sexual relationships were handled in this book, both between Vanessa and her late husband () and between Vanessa and James (). Over all, sweet and nice; probably not a re-read, but as I said more than I expected it to be.
October 22, 2024
Unique and quite interesting, this story just took too long to wind up. Plenty of quirky characters and a hero and heroine with chemistry, but by the last few chapters I was thinking, what’s taking so long? They seemed to go around and around in circles—I can appreciate what the author was trying to do but it seemed a bit much. Oh, and there’s a random sex scene—that isn’t a sex scene—thrown in after they agree not to have sex until they are married—if they are married. ??? Yeah. Just left me scratching my head. Not my usual reaction to Laura Matthews. But if I could cut out a good portion of the last few chapters, it would have been four stars.
January 28, 2019
Humorous character interactions and a slow steady pace. The romance was a very quietly formed attachment. There was a bit of a feminist tone to pieces of the story, balanced by the masculine attitudes of the time period making for a realistic feeling.
Mild violence, sex, mild language
Mild violence, sex, mild language
May 3, 2019
I think it needed something to make it magnetic but I really enjoyed it.
October 21, 2022
3.5
Cant quite put my finger on it but its missing a little something for me to round up my rating to 4.
Cant quite put my finger on it but its missing a little something for me to round up my rating to 4.
November 22, 2023
A little silly but still a fun read.
January 14, 2024
Another odd book from Laura Matthews. I enjoyed it well enough, but the quirky side characters were unredeemably awful, I didn’t particularly like either of the two main characters and the intrusive sexual element felt jarring.
Here’s the premise: Vanessa Damery has been a widow for two years, with two small children to raise and her husband’s much-neglected estate to manage, with no help from her fellow trustee. In addition, she’s been inundated with a variety of her husband’s relations and assorted hangers-on, which her kind-hearted parents tell her it’s her Christian duty to support. Into this difficult situation belatedly arrives the missing trustee, Lord Alvescot, very much aware of his condescension in doing so, and quite prepared to find everything in disarray at the hands of a mere woman. And just why are her expenses so high, anyway? His arrival is marred by a collision with the recklessly driven curricle of one of the hangers-on, his expected suitably large bedroom isn’t available, and in the poky room he’s assigned, a flimsy chair promptly collapses under his weight. Not an auspicious start.
I have to say, for anyone who’s a fan of curmudgeonly heroes, Alvescot is a spectacular example of the breed. He dislikes and distrusts everyone, is universally hostile and thoroughly charmless, and then there’s his aristocratic arrogance. But then Vanessa is edgy with him, too, not rude precisely but certainly prepared to give as good as she gets. Meanwhile, the hangers-on are as dismal a bunch as one can imagine, and it’s hard to see why she keeps supporting them, let alone have them living under her roof. In the whole household, only the children and the land steward are nice, normal, friendly people.
I was a little surprised that Vanessa was left so alone to take care of everything. Her husband’s relations are just spongers, not one of them having the commonsense to make themselves useful, or help in any way, apart from the one proposing vastly extravagant menus. And did she have no relations of her own who might have helped out? It would have been very unusual in those days for a woman to be managing an estate of any size. Normally the trustees would all be male. But there is a very poignant moment when she has to take the authoritative role, not one she’s ever been trained for and which goes against all her instincts, but she does it, and ends up shaking afterwards. That felt very real, to me, and was the point where I felt real sympathy for her.
The romance has a lot of ground to cover to get from mutual hostility to happy ending, and frankly I never found it very convincing. He gradually comes to see that she’s doing a good job with both the estate and the children under difficult circumstances, and inch by inch he begins to want to relieve her of some of the burdens. And of course, if he’d been remotely doing his job as fellow trustee from the start, she wouldn’t have had nearly so much to contend with. What she sees in him is less obvious. He starts off disliking her quite intensely, and when that starts to change into something else, he starts touching her. Now, holding her hand at a moment of stress is one thing, but he rests his hand on her shoulder at one point and starts playing with her hair, during an otherwise rational conversation, and frankly that just felt creepy to me. Then he kisses her and goes away without a word, leaving her uncertain, and sends her only businesslike letters. Foolish man.
Needless to say, the two do sort themselves out eventually, as well as seeing off the hangers-on, and the final night-time shenanigans with one particular lady are almost worth the price of admission alone, and single-handedly dragged the book from a grudging three stars up to four. I’ve mentioned the sex, which is not particularly graphic but didn’t add much to the story, although to be fair, with a widow, there ought to be some acknowledgement of it, and particularly whether the first marriage was satisfactory or not. For pedants out there, be warned that there’s a good sprinkling of Americanisms, especially ‘gotten’, but generally this felt very Heyeresque in tone. Despite the criticisms, I still enjoyed the read, and if this is a bit different from the usual Regency fare, I’m always happy to wander away from the familiar roads.
Here’s the premise: Vanessa Damery has been a widow for two years, with two small children to raise and her husband’s much-neglected estate to manage, with no help from her fellow trustee. In addition, she’s been inundated with a variety of her husband’s relations and assorted hangers-on, which her kind-hearted parents tell her it’s her Christian duty to support. Into this difficult situation belatedly arrives the missing trustee, Lord Alvescot, very much aware of his condescension in doing so, and quite prepared to find everything in disarray at the hands of a mere woman. And just why are her expenses so high, anyway? His arrival is marred by a collision with the recklessly driven curricle of one of the hangers-on, his expected suitably large bedroom isn’t available, and in the poky room he’s assigned, a flimsy chair promptly collapses under his weight. Not an auspicious start.
I have to say, for anyone who’s a fan of curmudgeonly heroes, Alvescot is a spectacular example of the breed. He dislikes and distrusts everyone, is universally hostile and thoroughly charmless, and then there’s his aristocratic arrogance. But then Vanessa is edgy with him, too, not rude precisely but certainly prepared to give as good as she gets. Meanwhile, the hangers-on are as dismal a bunch as one can imagine, and it’s hard to see why she keeps supporting them, let alone have them living under her roof. In the whole household, only the children and the land steward are nice, normal, friendly people.
I was a little surprised that Vanessa was left so alone to take care of everything. Her husband’s relations are just spongers, not one of them having the commonsense to make themselves useful, or help in any way, apart from the one proposing vastly extravagant menus. And did she have no relations of her own who might have helped out? It would have been very unusual in those days for a woman to be managing an estate of any size. Normally the trustees would all be male. But there is a very poignant moment when she has to take the authoritative role, not one she’s ever been trained for and which goes against all her instincts, but she does it, and ends up shaking afterwards. That felt very real, to me, and was the point where I felt real sympathy for her.
The romance has a lot of ground to cover to get from mutual hostility to happy ending, and frankly I never found it very convincing. He gradually comes to see that she’s doing a good job with both the estate and the children under difficult circumstances, and inch by inch he begins to want to relieve her of some of the burdens. And of course, if he’d been remotely doing his job as fellow trustee from the start, she wouldn’t have had nearly so much to contend with. What she sees in him is less obvious. He starts off disliking her quite intensely, and when that starts to change into something else, he starts touching her. Now, holding her hand at a moment of stress is one thing, but he rests his hand on her shoulder at one point and starts playing with her hair, during an otherwise rational conversation, and frankly that just felt creepy to me. Then he kisses her and goes away without a word, leaving her uncertain, and sends her only businesslike letters. Foolish man.
Needless to say, the two do sort themselves out eventually, as well as seeing off the hangers-on, and the final night-time shenanigans with one particular lady are almost worth the price of admission alone, and single-handedly dragged the book from a grudging three stars up to four. I’ve mentioned the sex, which is not particularly graphic but didn’t add much to the story, although to be fair, with a widow, there ought to be some acknowledgement of it, and particularly whether the first marriage was satisfactory or not. For pedants out there, be warned that there’s a good sprinkling of Americanisms, especially ‘gotten’, but generally this felt very Heyeresque in tone. Despite the criticisms, I still enjoyed the read, and if this is a bit different from the usual Regency fare, I’m always happy to wander away from the familiar roads.
April 13, 2018
There is bittersweet sadness to reading a new to me Laura Matthews. She is no longer writing. Some of my 'read 'em again' books are hers. Her story stories are poignant with well developed characters and believable plots. To some extent, the problems to overcome are within as well as outside the characters.
James, the Earl of Alverscot, rides into Vanessa Damery's life with the prejudices and expectations of his era and class. Vanessa is not impressed. The cast of characters are entertaining. The denouement is enjoyable.
Laura Matthews does not disappoint. The saddest part of finding a new pearl is that there are so few of them left for me.
James, the Earl of Alverscot, rides into Vanessa Damery's life with the prejudices and expectations of his era and class. Vanessa is not impressed. The cast of characters are entertaining. The denouement is enjoyable.
Laura Matthews does not disappoint. The saddest part of finding a new pearl is that there are so few of them left for me.
December 3, 2013
A gentle romance. Liked that the romantic leads were adults, thought about their relationship, and talked with each other. Their characters were nuanced and interesting. Wish there had been a bit more focus on the couple, and less on how the heroine could get a pack of truly despicable and encroaching relatives to vacate her home.
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January 9, 2010Fictionwise multiformat ebook
July 18, 2015
The middle part was a bit boring but I liked the end.
August 12, 2016
first read 9/11/15; re-read July 2016
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews