Jane Dunn - The Marriage Season

In Regency England, marriage is everything. For young widow Sybella Lovatt, the time has come to find a suitable husband for her sister and ward Lucie. Male suitors are scarce near their Wiltshire estate, so the sisters resolve to head to London in time for The Season to begin.
Once ensconced at the Mayfair home of Lady Godley, Lucie’s godmother, the whirl of balls, parties and promenades can begin. But the job of finding a husband is fraught with rules and tradition. Jostling for attention are the two lords – the charming and irresistible Freddie Lynwood and the preternaturally handsome Valentine Ravenell, their enigmatic neighbour from Shotten Hall, Mr Brabazon, and the dangerous libertine Lord Rockliffe, with whom the brooding Brabazon is locked in deadly rivalry.
Against the backdrop of glamorous Regency England, Sybella must settle Lucie’s future, protect her own reputation, and resist the disreputable rakes determined to seduce the beautiful widow. As the Season ends, will the sisters have found the rarest of things – a suitable marriage with a love story to match?

Comment: I added this book after seeing a positive review. The premise seemed good enough for me and since it's a genre I tend to enjoy, I thought why not.

In this story we meet the Carey sisters, who live at their estate in the country. However, despite their lives being well established there, widow Sybella and 18 year old Lucie know the only way for Lucie to find a suitable husband is to travel to London, for a Season. Their aunt lady Godley will sponsor Lucie and Sybella believes once her sister is married, she can go back to her estate, her bees and her music, while raising her son without his father, killed in the Peninsula war. 

However, even before they leave, they meet mr Brabazon and his younger cousin Freddie Lynwood, for Lucie helps Freddie after he falls from his horse. In London they reconnect and it seems the young pair hits it off as if they had never been apart, but will Sybella and mr Brabazon find common ground or will they let their pride be in the way of a possible happy end?

I was surprised by how engaging this story ended up being, considering the conflict is mainly related to the characters' personal decisions. In fact, there isn't a lot happening, except going from one spot to the other while the characters think about their actions and what it could mean. I will say that I wish the romance between Sybella and Mr Brabazon had been a bit more obviously presented and that they had thought about it in a more explicit way. This story has intimacy happening out of page, which didn't bother me, but I would have liked their attraction to be more obvious.

The pace of this story is slow and I know this might be a negative aspect for some readers. I didn't mind the pace itself, because it helped to put things into motion and it allowed the characters time to be introduced and to become established in their personalities. Lucie and Freddie are like teenagers, always having fun moments and so on, but both were aware of their positions and innocent at the same time, which meant that I didn't feel worried about them, for they would always make good choices. I also liked how good friends they were with Valentine Ravanell, the son of a duke, and how they helped him when he needed.

Lucie being young and having a Season might have put me off, because these themes in regencies are common, but not the most appealing to me. I think I wasn't demoralized because Lucie is a sweet and happy girl and one can't help but like reading about her. I also liked how she wasn't too innocent nor too vain and found everlasting friends. In fact, the interaction between most characters was one of my favorite elements, because it showed this group of people was steady and likable.

Sybella and mr Brabazon were, very obviously, the main pair in the story, and the one whose relationship was more complex. There aren't explicit sex scenes in the story, not even when they finally have their HEA but when I said I would have liked to see more sexual tension between them while the romance was developing is because they don't reveal their emotions that easily, and while this can be true to the time and the society, I still would have liked them to long for one another in a more obvious way.

Sybella is a widow who married for love and her husband died before seeing his son. I felt Sybella is content with her life and mr Brabazon made her think about a possible lonely future, so it was certainly fine that she didn't fall into his arms right away, nor that she would see him as an adventure. This shows her character is one of consideration for herself and for others, but despite her widow status not having to mean she was a "woman of the world", I still hoped she would think about him in more emotional terms, and not as demure as it usually was.

Mr Brabazon was certainly complex and complicated, and there was one or two scenes with him I'd change, but he is one of those quiet, apparently unapproachable heroes who is actually lonely too and I was rooting for him and Sybella. I think that, for such a smart man as he is meant to be, he did take too long to realize the truth of his feelings and to act in a more decisive manner. I suppose this happened so that the plot would take longer to develop and to be finished...

All things considered, this was a sweet, cozy read. I mean cozy in the sense that nothing terrible, nothing overly exaggerated happens, and the plot is pretty much following the lives of these characters. I'll have to check the author's other novels to see if they are similar or I'll wait for a new book to be published one day.

Grade: 7/10