Georgette Heyer Fans discussion

How are you finding this book so far?

Remember - no spoilers!

Under spoiler tags in the first part of the book I mention how the story picks up when Miles first appears. For me, he is one of GH's most vividly realised heroes.

Towards the end of the first half the story picks up again when Stacy appears.

I have to say, I like that Abby quickly realizes that she finds Miles attractive.

Oh Mrs Clapham! How provident is her arrival.
(view spoiler)[I so totally fell for this plot development when I first read the book. I was too busy turning the pages, anxious to see where the story was going, to actually stop and be suspicious of Mrs C's timely appearance. (hide spoiler)]

I'm loving it as always and in fact, the story is rapidly rising in my opinion.

Fanny is busy enacting Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen Regency style. I have little patience for teenage drama. Been there done that.

Stacy (view spoiler)[is just awful. He should raise red flags for Fanny but she isn't old enough to see that yet. At least she does understand eloping in Scotland is not the thing and she can't cause her aunts to be ostracized just yet before their rout. Thank goodness for the flu. (hide spoiler)]

Oh Miles! (view spoiler)[His proposal was so unromantic and I don't blame Abigail for wondering if he was serious. I don't doubt he is fond of her and wants to free her from what he sees as a gilded cage. She has a tough dilemma. I would feel the same way she does. I'm only a wannabe rebel at heart. (hide spoiler)]

Barb in Maryland wrote: "Oh Mrs Clapham! How provident is her arrival.
[spoilers removed]"

Me, too! Got me this time again, in my defense, it has been two brain surgeries since my last read...🥴

The only glimpse so far of the Miles as I had imagined him (see my post in the other thread) is (view spoiler)[his out-of-the-blue proposal to Abby (hide spoiler)]. That was shocking! And funny. But apart from that, I still don't like him, or rather he doesn't interest me. The constant back-and-forth witty dialogue with Abby fails to amuse me (as it's often the case with this trope). And since Abby is obviously worried and distressed over the Fanny situation, the way he keeps saying to her "I don't care! La la la" (even though it will surely (view spoiler)[change by the end, or will be shown to having been not the case all along, or something similar (hide spoiler)]), is irritating.

:-( Since Miles was the main reason I started this book, I'm afraid it's not going to be a high rating for me.

Moloch wrote: "The only glimpse so far of the Miles as I had imagined him (see my post in the other thread) is [spoilers removed]. That was shocking! And funny. But apart from that, I still don't like him, or rat..."

While unfortunately I'm not a fan of the main couple, I do like the secondary characters in this book: I like Fanny and Selina, Stacy is much more interesting than his uncle to me, I suppose (view spoiler)[Oliver (hide spoiler)] is going to play a bigger role soon (I have to start chapter 13), but so far he's the only one (not counting the very minor characters) who has yet to make an impression.

Finished. Not the book and the fun I had hoped it would be.

I thought the introduction of (view spoiler)[Mrs Clapham (hide spoiler)] was brilliant and hilarious up until I began to suspect (and then knew) that it was (view spoiler)[Miles' plan (hide spoiler)].

The story of Mr Stacy Calverleigh, the gentleman always on the brink of disaster but desperately trying to conceal it from everyone and using his seductive charm to exploit people, in the hands of a Maupassant would have been great.

OK, I have to admit that I LOL'd at this bit, in Chapter 10, Oliver ruminating on being relegated to "brother status" by Fanny:

"Half a loaf was better than no bread: he didn't know who had been responsible for that silly proverb, only that he must have been a cod's head. It wasn't better: when the lovely, darling girl you would have given your soul to possess invited you to be her brother it was infinitely worse."

The LOL moment for me came when I realized that Heyer had just described what the Youth These Days call being "Friend Zoned", to devastating effect!

Elliot wrote: "OK, I have to admit that I LOL'd at this bit, in Chapter 10, Oliver ruminating on being relegated to "brother status" by Fanny:

"Half a loaf was better than no bread: he didn't know who had been ..."

Elliot, you're exactly right!

From what I've read, the men who complain about being Friend Zoned seem to be arguing from a sense of entitlement - if they are worth being a friend, they are entitled to more. Oliver regrets that Fanny doesn't see him as a boy-friend, but I doubt if he will take to the internet to whine about it ...

I think there's multiple versions of the same thing happening in the word friendzone:

1) Like Fanny and Oliver: one person wants more while the other thinks they're just friends.

2) A guy pretends to be 'friends' with a girl when he really wants a romance and then gets resentful when his 'investment' in their friendship doesn't pay off in sex.

3) A girl knows that a guy loves her and lets him get just close enough that he has hope, but really she knows she would never love him, she just enjoys the vanity boost of a devoted follower.

The guys who complain on the internet are in group 2 but imagine they're in group 3!