This is the sixth book in M. C. Beaton’s “Royal Ambition Series”. They are all stand-alone novels however, I have chosen to read them in the order they were written and published. To read my review on the first five books in this series, click “Book Reviews” on the menu tab of the homepage of this blog.
Lady Margery has been a wall flower at every season her father has put her out hoping that she gets hitched to an eligible bachelor. Her dream is to stay unmarried and live quietly at her home in Chelmsford but this is shattered when her father marries the insatiable Desdemona and plans to sell their home to satisfy her endless needs. Lady Margery now has to marry to save her home but the suspicious Marquees of Edgecombe seems to always be in her business, trying to sabotage her plans to attract his eligible friends on her list. However, to her surprise, her heart always seems to skip when ever he shows up but she must ignore him to make a suitable match for herself.
This is the first Beaton book I have read that I honestly disliked the protagonists. I found them childish and self sabotaging. I also couldn’t relate to the shift in character from a quite wall flower to a girl who would seduce three friends because of her urgent need to save her house. The Marquess was also going to extremes to undermine Margery on behalf of his three friends who were equally full grown men that should have been able to at least handle their businesses. I found myself skipping pages at some point as I got a bored. Things got a bit better towards the end but overall I didn’t really enjoy the story.
Rating: 2.5 Stars
Published: January 14th, 2014 by Rosetta Books
Pages: 196
Genre: Regency Romance
Purchase @ www.amazon.com/ladymargerysintrigue
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.
