ETA: This contest is closed. Jeanne won the book!
Amanda Forester’s new Regency, A Midsummer Bride, is out next week, so I thought this would be a good time to give away a signed copy of the first in her Marriage Mart series (tied together by a society matchmaker), A Wedding in Springtime.
I should warn you, if you need 100% historical accuracy to enjoy a story, this is probably not the book for you. But I loved it. I’ve been mostly drawn to deeply emotional, heartwrenching historicals recently (although I need those to have a sense of humor, too). It was wonderful and refreshing to read a book that reminded me of the slim, witty Jane-Austen-and-Heyeresque Regencies I ate up in high school–sparkling, sweet comedies of manners.
I’d still be eating those books up if they were still being published, let me tell you. Are there still loads of these out there and I just haven’t been reading them? Recommend me some witty romps, guys! I adore Julia Quinn, obviously, but apart from her I’ve completely fallen away from that part of the genre.
A Wedding in Springtime hearkens back to the faves of my youth in the best possible way, with the same focus on banter and conversational chemistry. There’s even a street urchin the hero reluctantly brings into his home to please the soft-hearted heroine! I love that trope, and I was thrilled when the urchin actually turned out to have a key part to play in the plot.
The heroine is endearing, the hero is an adorkable sweetheart (the highest praise I can give a hero!) who is completely, satisfyingly smitten from the moment he sees the heroine, the secondary characters are drawn sharply and with warm-hearted generosity, and best of all…
…the jokes are funny. I cannot emphasize enough how funny the jokes are. I laughed out loud many, many times reading this book. More than anything else, the humor kept me enthusiastically engaged all the way to the last page.
Just comment on this post to enter, and make sure you enter your correct e-mail address (NOT in the body of the comment, just in the form where it says Name:, Mail:, Website:, make sure the e-mail address you enter for “Mail” is right). It won’t show up to other commenters, but I’ll get it and then I can easily notify you of your win. As always, if you want to be alerted when a new contest goes up, I recommend signing up for my newsletter.
NB: I got this book signed at a conference. Amanda isn’t involved in the giveaway and the book isn’t personalized. So if you want to tell her how much you loved her books, this isn’t the place. That would be her website. (But this IS the place to tell ME how much you loved it!)