Love Lessons by Elizabeth Mansfield

I rarely find that first person romances work very well. I feel like I don't get to know the hero well enough, and the heroine just isn't interesting enough to be the only voice we hear through the whole book. But there are always exceptions...

Love Lessons by Elizabeth Mansfield
(1983, Regency) 4/20/08
Grade: 3.5

After the death of her less-than-proper mother, Anne ends up as the ward of Oliver Fleming. At first, Anne lives a free and easy life at Pentargon, but as she comes of age, she realizes she’s in love with Oliver, but he sees her as only a child. So she moves to London, but will her transformation from hoyden to willful debutante be enough to change Oliver’s mind?

This reminded me very much of the old Victoria Holt novels, except with a greater emphasis on Regency life rather than gothic castles. It’s written in the first person, and Anne has a strong point of view that makes it work. It’s her character that makes the book work. Although we never get Oliver’s point of view directly, we see him fairly clearly through his actions as well as through Anne’s eyes. The book was sometimes a bit melodramatic (especially in Anne’s sometimes pretentious use of French terms) but overall, this book was extremely readable, and it was an interesting hybrid of Regency and gothic - a flashback to the Victoria Holt novels I used to love.

There was something about this book that made it feel like a nice change from the typical romance. Maybe it was the longer time period of the book. We got to see Anne mature from age 12 to about 19 or 20. That used to be more common in romances, but today, it seems that we don't have the patience for such things.