Booklog 70/2024: Beverley Watts: Grace – Shackleford Sisters #1

[jacey]

This was sweet enough. An arranged marriage. A misunderstanding that could have been resolved if the two protagonists had talked to each other. Grace is the eldest daughter of the Rev. Shackleford, whose good sense, if he ever had any, has evaporated. He sells Grace to a duke in need of a wife for a dowry to get himself out of a financial squeeze. Sadly the author doesn’t seem to know that a dowry is the opposite of a bride-price and usually comes with the bride from the bride’s father.

Comments

[watervole]

That's a pretty basic mistake re dowry!

[jacey]

Sadly, yes.I've come across some howlers in Regency romance mainly written by Americans, I believe. There was the heroine who had pop tarts for breakfast, for instance. Ouch.

[watervole]

Pop tarts? Seriously? OMG.

I knew there was a reason I mostly stuck with Heyer. She only gets it wrong when there was either a mistake in the sources she used, or where there was nothing for her to reference.

[jacey]

I tend to read Regency romance as fantasy. Bridgerton, for instance, is pure fun.

[watervole]

I get where you're coming from, but I have the kind of mind that loses the ability to suspect disbelief when hit too hard. I've dropped out of tales for anything from bad geology to plants flowering at the wrong time of year. Bad history is worse than either of those... (for me)

Even in fantasy worlds, I need them to be internally consistent - which to the credit of the writers I read, usually are.

[jacey]

Yes, the writers I usually read don't usually drop such clangers, and when they do it's the last book of theirs that I'll read. (As this one is.) Internal consistency is really important.