“Colonel Sandhurst To The Rescue” is the fifth book in “The Poor Relation” regency romance series. This book can be read as a standalone novel as the gist from the earlier titles are summarized here. You can read my reviews on the other titles by clicking “Book Reviews” on the menu on my homepage.
Colonel Sandhurst has been given the difficult task to collect their debt from the ruthless Sir Randolph who had lodged in the Poor Relations hotel for six month and left without paying his bills. He journeys there to meet a disheveled Frederica, Sir Randolph’s daughter who tells him she is running away from home because her father has planned to marry her off to a Lord Bewley, an older man who she doesn’t wish to marry. It is at this point Colonel Sandhurst has the bright idea to lure Frederica back with him to London and give her board in the hotel then writes her father for a ransom to get her back.
It is outside the Poor Relations hotel that Frederica stumbles upon Captain Peter Mannners a dashing young man and falls in love but Manners is already promised to the beautiful Miss Belinda Devenham. Also, Lord Bewley travels to London and lodges in the Poor Relations hotel in search of his missing bride to be whom he has never met but this ends up in a complicated affair. As usual, the author takes us into a sea of love triangles, action, drama and a happy romantic ending.
I find that each book focuses on one of the “Poor Relations” but is laced with multiple themes and several other main characters which makes for a more interesting read.
This book was as enjoyable as the others and I highly recommend it to all romance fans. This is also a clean read suitable for Christians and teenagers. Now on to the final book in this series…….
Rating: 4 Stars
Published: 2013 by Canvas (First published in 1993)
Pages: 188
Genre: Historical Fiction
Purchase @ www.amazon.com/mrsbudley
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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