Before Julia Qunn and Bridgerton there was Georgette Heyer, the queen of the Regency romp. though the door is most definitely closed on the bedroom!
I read this story many years ago as a teenager (before the existence of YA) and had forgotten how funny Heyer can be. The only qualm I had about reading it today was the fact that the 17 year old heroine married a 35 year old.
In a story of a marriage of convenience, misunderstandings, misplaced jewels, highwaymen, gambling and jealousy Heyer's displays a lightness of touch and cracking pace!
There are some laugh out loud moments and as always it all comes right in the end. Her knowledge of the lifestyle, dress and form of transport of the rich in the eighteenth century is on display but it never gets in the way of a good story.
A good read if you want a bit of escapism

This is the first Georgette Heyer book I have read. Although I like historical novels, I think historical romances are not my genre. A light read but not an engaging one.

This is my first Georgette Heyer novel and I thoroughly enjoyed it. ‘The Convenient Marriage’ is a standalone Regency romance although Heyer wrote many historical romances and detective fiction; some as one-off novels others as series. I didn’t know what to expect from ‘The Convenient Marriage’ but right from the off I loved Horry Winwood. She is cheeky and clever, charming and brave.
The story starts with the three Winwood sisters. The eldest Elizabeth has agreed to receive the attentions of Lord Rule, knowing he intends to propose. But Lizzie wants to marry her impoverished soldier beau Lieutenant Edward Heron. The Winwood family is destitute due to the gambling habit of their brother Pelham and Lizzie knows the marriage will save the family. Her sister Charlotte will not consider marrying Rule and Horatia, or Horry, is too young being only seventeen. Until Horry, so named after her godfather Horace Walpole, uses her initiative and visits Rule. She proposes that she marry him so Lizzie is free to marry Edward. And so the convenient marriage takes place.
The real story is what happens next. Horry is a bit of a minx, getting into trouble, playing cards and generally doing things a wife shouldn’t do. And despite always expecting the disapproval of Rule, she cannot seem to stop getting into trouble. Motivated by gossip about Rule’s mistress, Horry takes more risks but her gallant brother Pel is on hand to help.
If you like fizzing, humorous romances tossed together with convincing Regency details, you will love this; the dresses, the hair styles, the wigs, the manners, the food. Regency London seems full of chaotic parties with dancing, music, cards and flirting. An exuberant escapist book, ideal for transporting you to another time far away from your everyday life.
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I have loved Georgette Heyer's books since I was a young teenager. I grew up in Bath and could always imagine the the scenes and loved the period of civility and grandeur. Heyer gives great descriptions of her characters and it is great escapism, usually with a happy ending!! Very enjoyable read.

I'm not sure why I haven't got around to reading more of Georgette Heyer's novels, as I thoroughly enjoy them when I do. The Convenient marriage is in many ways, more of a comedy than anything else, but it certainly also has its share of romance and I was left with a contented smile on my face by the end.
The hero and heroine are in many ways a complete mismatch. Horry is headstrong, immature and only 17. The Earl of Rule is quite a bit older and seemingly has no real need or wish for his wife. After Rule's sister suggests that he marries and Horry's family needs one of their daughters to marry well in order to save them from financial ruin, Horry and Rule enter into a marriage of convenience, with Horry promising not to interfere in Rule's life.
I know that many people are put off by the huge age gap. By today's standards, it's pretty big, but this is a story set over 20 years ago and people are a little concerned that someone just out of the schoolroom has made such a great match but don't seem to be too concerned about the age difference. Horry is a little bit young for Rule, but by the end of the book she has grown into her role as wife and they seem quite suited. If you can put aside modern sensibility, then I really don't think that the age difference is a problem.
I loved the humour in this book. Rule has a very dry wit and I found myself chuckling whenever he appeared. He clearly finds himself drawn to Horry's character and finds her frankness and direct approach delightful. I can easily imagine them becoming a close couple that understands each other very well as their relationship progressed.
This was a highly entertaining read, with many of the side characters adding to the humour, Pom and Pel, in particular, are very funny with their continued well-meaning, but ultimately hopeless attempts to help. I loved Horry and Rule and seeing how their marriage becomes more than a convenient one by the end.
I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Did not really like the book. The leading lady is very childish , although 17 years old, behaves like a 15 year old. This was not good. There are way too many elements that don't work, it's a mess.

This isn't my favourite of the Georgette Heyers, but it is a lot of fun. This is - as the title tells you - a marriage of convenience trope (is it *the* originator of the trope, maybe). Horry married Rule for his money - to save her family and also to save her sister Lizzy - who was already in love with someone else. Horry sets out to be the most perfect trouble free wife she can be - but in the (not very successful) process falls in love with her husband. Trouble is, she knows that's not the sort of relationship he wants. Or is it? This has mix-ups, beaux, schemers and innocents getting tangled up in things they don't understand, and it's charmgin

This is a reissue of a title I read many years ago. Georgette Heyer's romances are a wonderful oasis of well written and well researched fluff, ever so slightly Shakespearean in the way the intrigue unfolds. Compared to today's lazy attempts at regency romance, these are by far and away the original and best.

Our heroine is Horatia - Horry - Winwood, the youngest and most headstrong of the three daughters of widowed Lady Winwood. The males of the family are possessed of a Fatal Flaw, an addiction to gambling, so it is down to Lizzy, the eldest daughter, to save the family fortunes by making a marriage of convenience to the unspeakably wealthy and, at the ripe old age of 35 positively elderly, Lord Rule. However, Lizzy loves the respectable Captain Heron, so Horry nobly offers herself to Lord Rule instead. She understands it will not be a love match, but is nevertheless outraged to fins that he has a mistress, and sets out to show him, the world and herself that she does not give a fig.

So the stage is set for all sorts of outrageous plot twists on the road to love for this unlikely couple. We have comic misunderstandings bordering on slapstick, mincing fops, highwaymen, dastardly villains, and through it all the mysteriously prescient Lord Rule, unexpectedly falling in love with his very young bride and failing to grasp that she loves him too.

Outlining the plot doesn't begin to do justice to Georgette Heyer's sublime command of the genre. The story trips along with perfect timing, characters are rounded and sympathetic (or not), and the period detail is extensive and thoroughly researched, but applied with a very light, sure hand. It was an utter pleasure revisiting this author, and very welcome news that her works are being reissued.

This is a average romance.
The characters just felt unreal and unfortunately the story line is very obvious.
This really did struggle to hold my attention.

This beautiful book re-read after 40 years!

What an absolute delight to go back in time and re-read a book by Georgette Heyer. I first read her books when I was a teenager and loved them then.

Sometimes it is not a good idea to go back as it can often mean disappointment but not with this book. Georgette Heyer was the master of Regency romance. Her stories are always interesting and although the outcome is usually the same, i.e. her hero and heroine end up falling in love despite positively disliking or at least having no feelings for each other to start with, they are still such fun to read.

The heroine of A Convenient Marriage is 17-year-old Horatia Winwood, the youngest of three sisters. When Lord Rule, a 35-year-old man of the world, decides to marry he wants a family with a good name. He chooses the 2nd sister Lizzie but she is already in love with Edward Heron, a man without much in the way of prospects. Lizzie is devastated but decides to make the sacrifice for her family and in particular for her brother Pelham, a young man who does nothing but waste his life gambling leaving the Winwood family in near penury.

Horatia or Horry as she is known cannot bear to see the suffering of her sister and decides to visit Lord Rule and in her, completely disarming manner offers herself to Lord Rule in marriage explaining exactly why Lizzie does not want to accept his proposal and even asking Lord Rule to buy Edward Heron a captaincy.

To the Winwood family’s surprise and consternation, Lord Rule agrees to this marriage. In truth, he is only marrying because he feels he should; he has a comfortable life and a devoted mistress and Horry suits him perfectly. It will be a Marriage of Convenience.

Horry thoroughly enjoys her new social status becoming involved in buying an extensive wardrobe and gambling at various events that the life of the rich in this period seemed to spend their days. She soon, however, becomes aggrieved that her husband is leading his own life and decides to try and get her revenge by forming a friendship with Baron Robert Lethbridge. She does not know that there is bad blood between Robert and her husband due to a previous problem with Lord Rule’s sister nor does she realise that Baron Lethbridge has only one aim, to seduce Horry to get back at Lord Rule.

The delight of this book is the way Ms Heyer describes the society of the time, the snobbishness, what is au fait and what is not and the obnoxious manners of many of the so-called elite set. Horry is like a breath of fresh air in her innocence and naivety but she learns the ways of this new world very quickly.

As always with Ms Heyer’s novels, there is a happy ending and I can still remember wanting to find out how this happens. I studied Jane Austen’s novels when I was at university and she has always been one of my favourite authors due mainly to her use of irony. I believe that Georgette Heyer is also a master of irony but in a more light-hearted way and I am now going to go back and re-read more of her books.

If you have never read any, I would recommend that you do; it is like a breath of fresh air to read a romance without any graphic details that tend to be in so many books written today. If you like a good story with interesting characters read Georgette Heyer.

Dexter

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

This proved to be a very different Regency romance and I thoroughly enjoyed escaping into it! This is definitely one of those books where I suggest you go and grab yourself a copy to read rather than reading my review of it!

Her gambling father and brother have brought her family to near ruin so when she discovers that her oldest sister is to be married to the Earl of Rule, someone she doesn't love, Horatia Winwood (also known as Horry) steps in to offer to marry him herself instead. Horry is still only seventeen but the Earl, Marcus, agrees. She is unused to being the focus of the ton and is enticed by the attentions of Lord Lethbridge, initially unaware of the animosity between him and her husband or that he seeks revenge..... Can Horry take more control of her life and recognise the dangers? Can she woo her husband? There's going to be deceptions, even kidnapping, highwaymen and perils galore in this fantastic story!

I found this to be a real page turner that I just didn't want to put down. Horatia's close relationship with her siblings motivates her to try to protect them but she has some real growing up to do in her new role as a wife. Marcus is so patient and considerate - the antithesis of how she initially perceived him. I particularly liked how he worked things out and took his own steps to rectify matters when necessary. I'll certainly be looking for more stories about the Winwoods in future!

I requested and was lucky enough to be gifted a copy of this delightful Regency romance and this is my honest review after choosing to read it.

Reading this book ahead of it's republication it highlights just what current romance writers owe to people like Heyer, but also how they often pale when the books are compared to books like this.



Horry, the 17 year old youngest Winwood girl, she of the stammer and the peculiar eyebrows, hears that Marcus Drelincount is about to offer for her older sister, who is already in love with a man of limited means. The Winwood family have a "good" name (but also a bad turn for gambling, and heavily in debt due to Pelham, the only son). Drelincourt, 35, has the money but who could do with marrying into a "good" old family. To him, it is irrelevant which of the sisters he marries, so when Horry offers to marry him instead of Lizzy, he accepts.

Horry is not in love with her husband - both know it is a marriage of convenience, but she finds out that her husband gives his affections elsewhere. So in order to feel a little happier, she starts going out, spending copious amounts of money and gambling far too much. She falls in with Lord Lethbridge, who she continues to be friends with, despite Rule asking her to stay away - she doesnt know that Lethridge has a reputation and has already tried to ruin Rule's sister, amongst others. He is also an inveterate gambler.

Things go too far when Horry goes to a party she's agreed to not go to whilst her husband is away, and Lethbridge kidnaps her into his house in order to take advantage of her. Judicious use of a poker gives Horry the chance to escape, but in the preceding struggle, her bodice is ripped and an unmistakable brooch falls to the ground. The last third of the book is to do with the getting the brooch back before Rule finds out (which he does anyway, long before anyone else realises).

During the course of the book, there are duels, drunken gaming sessions, kidnapping, foolish siblings and their friends, misunderstandings, and highwaymen available to do anything for the right price. We also get to see a woman's toilette, so we find out about different hairstyles, what they are called, and the beauty spots/patches that were much in fashion at the time.

Some of the story is a little predictable to modern readers, but that’s because many of the scenes have been reused in later books. Heyer keeps Horrie’s chatter to a minimum, knowing that the keeping up the stammer in print would lose her readers. Therefore we get to hear more about how Pel and his friends talk to each other than Horrie and Rule. Lizzie and the other immediate female family members disappear from the book almost immediately after the wedding and are only seen on occasion, and then from a distance. 

It's a tad more challenging than some of the modern day romances, but no less enjoyable for this!

I'm a huge fan of Georgette Heyer and was happy when this ARC.
It was a pleasure to read one of her novels I never read before and enjoy again her style of writing, the sense of humour and her lovely characters.
This was very good, enjoyable and entertaining, a page turner that kept me hooked till the last page.
Everything was perfect: the style of writing, the characters, the descriptions, and the plot.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to Random House UK, Cornerstone and Netgalley for this ARC

My thanks to Penguin Random House/Cornerhouse for an ebook of this new edition of Georgette Heyer’s ‘The Convenient Marriage’, first published in 1934.

When the name Georgette Heyer is mentioned I automatically think of the Regency. Yet it was clear from the descriptions of fashion, hairstyles and the like that this was not one of her Regency romances but a Georgian one. The mention of Edward Heron being wounded at Bunker’s Hill and visits to a pre-Revolutionary France sets it circa 1775/76. I tend to be quite fussy about period detail so it pleased me to anchor it in time.

In the novel the wealthy Earl of Rule has decided it is time for him to marry and had approached Lady Winwood for permission to ask for the hand of her eldest daughter, Elizabeth. Despite the family being on the brink of ruin and in need of this union, Elizabeth is in love with the above mentioned Edward. Her headstrong younger sister, Horatia (Horry) suggests to Lord Rule that he accept her instead in a ‘marriage of convenience’. He agrees to the arrangement. Lurking in the background is his long time mistress, who is annoyed by his decision.

What follows is a delightful romp full of colourful characters, sparkling wit, meticulous period detail and so much more. Despite the comedy there were darker undertones reflecting the decadence of the period. The devastating effects of gambling, which was the cause of the Winwood’s misfortune, is an underlying theme.

I read many of Georgette Heyer’s novels when I was young though not this one. I felt it has aged well and was a delightful romance.

A deliciously witty romance by my favourite Regency romance author. When Horatia’s eldest sister Elizabeth is proposed to by the Earl of Rule, as the Winthrop family are deeply in debt she reluctantly feels she has to accept.
However, as Elizabeth is in love with Edward Heron, Horatia, the youngest of the three Winwood sisters, proposes to take her place and suggests this to the earl. Slightly taken aback, the Earl agrees, and his previously ordered life soon turns into chaos.
The book is wonderfully entertaining, humorous and enjoyable to read as we are introduced to rakes, macaronies, and highway men, all characters drawn in such a clever way by Georgette Heyer’s skillful hand. Horatia, a young, feisty heroine, believing that her husband is in love with another, is drawn into the glamorous world of the Regency ton, and becomes embroiled in various scrapes, having to be helped out by her charismatic, erstwhile brother Pelham and friends. The result is a humorous, laugh a minute, escapade into Regency London.
I didn’t want this book to end, romantic escapism at its best! Highly recommended.

Oh I do love Georgette Heyer! It is easy to forget how witty she is, how tongue in cheek about all her male characters - not a typical chap in any of them! This one has gentle yet strong heroes, along with ludicrous brothers and even more ludicrous pals, all wrapped in a mad romp that centres around a ridiculously young yet feisty heroine. Ah yes, GH's heroines are never less than feisty, and perfect for your teenage girl to show her that being strong always comes out top!

What a wonderful sojourn into an era long since past, where men are men (or sometimes Macaroni’s) and women are presented and beautiful. But for all that, they are, well, they are ... lesser. I applaud Georgette Heyer for, in a book that was originally published in 1934, giving her heroine grit and feistiness. Grit and feistiness can’t have been an easy sell in 1934, so hats off to you Ms Heyer.

I loved this, I loved that I had to read it alongside a dictionary because many of the terms have now been lost from use, I loved the farcical element of the scrapes Horry got herself into and I loved that, in my heart of hearts I knew it would all be ok in the end.

This is a novel of pure escapism, it was never meant to set the world alight but read it, smile and enter a world of glitter, glamour and gallantry.

Thank-you to Netgalley for providing an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Convenient Marriage, Georgette Heyer

Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews

Genre: Historical Fiction , Women's Fiction

*cough * yet again, Women's fiction – Why?

Anyway, confession time from me. I've read thousands of novels and not one Georgette Heyer. I don't know why, no particular reason, I di enjoy a historical novel occasionally. Now though I'm thinking – wow, all those stories I haven't read ;-) Yay. I loved this book.

So we're back in history, but of course a sanitised version, which is fine by me, this is Fiction world. Its a comedic read full of typical British understated humour. That works best for me, I hate reads which labour the comedy, which I feel are telling me Laugh Now Dammit! Some fabulous characters, a tale which could be almost slapstick and yet it raised by the clever use of subtlety, where I really didn't know just what was going to happen next. I loved Rule, a true Gentleman, and the way he indulged Horrie, his gentle words to her when she goes just that bit too far, were a treat. Horrie was a good lead too, but....at times I really did want to tell her to just Grow Up. She was lucky in that Rule had the money to indulge her, but she could turn into someone very dis-likable if it continued. I got the feeling by the end that she'd learned a lot about herself though.
Side characters, her sisters were good, Pel and Pom, a pair of goodhearted but hopeless Gentlemen, Drelincourt, Crosby and of course the infamous Lady Massey and her machinations all made for a story that was a treat to read, a gentle romance, a fun slip into a history that isn't real but feels as if it could be.

Stars: Five, a fabulous, subtle humour read that had me guessing to the end how events would come right.

ARC supplied by Netgalley and Publishers

One of my favourite Heyers! With her usual light touch and wonderfully witty style, Heyer presents us with another attractive couple for whom we're rooting. Horry is one of her most charming heroines and the story of her love affair with her husband is amusing and romantic. It's been years since I've read Heyer: must re-read them urgently!