Summer Campaign by Carla Kelly

Has Carla Kelly written a bad book? There have been some that I didn't like as much as others (this one wasn't a keeper) but I haven't found any major clunkers in her backlist so far - which isn't something I can say about my other favorite authors.

Summer Campaign by Carla Kelly
(1989, Regency) 3/16/08
Grade: 4

Illegitimate Onyx Hamilton has little choice but to marry tedious, overbearing Reverend Andrew Littletree. But on her way to the vicarage, she is attacked by highwaymen and saved by Major Jack Beresford, newly returned from Spain and desperate to get home. After Jack is injured, Onyx must take care of him - and finds a love she never expected.

As always, Carla Kelly creates realistic characters and puts them in heartrending, vividly depicted situations. The story may be simple, but the characters of Onyx and Jack are so perfectly rendered, you can’t help understanding them and feeling for them. The author can write scenes that leave you laughing (the teasing about the nonexistent “little Ned” kept me giggling for a couple of chapters) and then write scenes that leave you in tears (Jack’s wrenching memories of Badajoz, the deathbed scenes of Jack’s brother Adrian). I only had a few quibbles, which kept this from becoming a keeper. The quiet romance was lovely, but sometimes it was too quiet, almost in the background. It needed a bit more, especially at the end. And there were some plot threads that were played up in the early sections (Jack’s stammer, for example) and then were dropped. But overall, even though it didn’t reach the heights of Kelly’s best books, it was still a very enjoyable read.

Carla Kelly's books are always real, sometimes to the point of painfulness. I'm not sure I'd want a steady diet of war and illness and death, but it's a nice change from the cutesiness of so many romances.