This is the second book in “The Poor Relation” series. You may not need to read the first title to catch up with the story as all the relevant details are highlighted in this book.
The five “Poor Relations” are low on cash again even when the Duke of Rowcester paid for the damages from the fire at the hotel. They decide to send the feeble Miss Tonks to her sisters’ to steal something valuable to enable them raise money to get back on their feet. Miss Tonks journeys home to her sister’s house where she meets the very eligible Lord Eston who helps her and she is suddenly pulled into a sea of adventures. These adventures transform Miss Tonks into a bolder, stronger woman who her friends do not recognize and she ends with a big triumph as she helps to hook up her niece Cassandra Blessop with her true love.
This story is spiced with mystery, action, suspense and of course romance and I loved every bit of it. As usual, it is a quick, well paced read with lots of new things to learn about regency England. In these times, men wore wigs, high heels and powdered their faces white. This I found absurd but interesting. An unmarried lady had to be chaperoned by an older lady almost all the time and could not be alone with any gentleman and the most intriguing was the way gossip traveled so fast without mobile phones or the internet. Eavesdropping was the order of the day and obviously part of the culture then. These and many more were my take aways from this beauty.
I recommend this book to romance lovers and teenagers.
Rating: 4 Stars
Published: August 15, 2013 by Canvas (First published in 1993)
Pages: 192
Genre: Historical Romance
Purchase @ www.amazon.com/misstonks
The Author: Marion Chesney was born on 1936 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and started her first job as a bookseller in charge of the fiction department in John Smith & Sons Ltd. While bookselling, by chance, she got an offer from the Scottish Daily Mail to review variety shows and quickly rose to be their theatre critic. She left Smith’s to join Scottish Field magazine as a secretary in the advertising department, without any shorthand or typing, but quickly got the job of fashion editor instead. She then moved to the Scottish Daily Express where she reported mostly on crime. This was followed by a move to Fleet Street to the Daily Express where she became chief woman reporter. After marrying Harry Scott Gibbons and having a son, Charles, Marion went to the United States where Harry had been offered the job of editor of the Oyster Bay Guardian. When that didn’t work out, they went to Virginia and Marion worked as a waitress in a greasy spoon on the Jefferson Davies in Alexandria while Harry washed the dishes. Both then got jobs on Rupert Murdoch’s new tabloid, The Star, and moved to New York.
Anxious to spend more time at home with her small son, Marion, urged by her husband, started to write historical romances in 1977. After she had written over 100 of them under her maiden name, Marion Chesney, and under the pseudonyms: Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, Helen Crampton, Charlotte Ward, and Sarah Chester, she getting fed up with 1714 to 1910, she began to write detectives stories in 1985 under the pseudonym of M. C. Beaton. On a trip from the States to Sutherland on holiday, a course at a fishing school inspired the first Constable Hamish Macbeth story. They returned to Britain and bought a croft house and croft in Sutherland where Harry reared a flock of black sheep. But Charles was at school, in London so when he finished and both tired of the long commute to the north of Scotland, they moved to the Cotswolds where Agatha Raisin was created.
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