2018 Regency romance. Phyllida Satterthwaite has always been thought
more odd than beautiful, but in her London season that oddity makes
her a sensation—and one that attracts unwelcome attention. Captain
Arthur Heywood came back crippled from the war and feels he has
nothing to offer any lady…
Having run out of later Matthews to read, I've gone back to some
of her earlier works; and while this is still good, it doesn't quite have
the craft of the more recent books.
There's little in the sense of an overall theme: there's a problem for
one or other of the couple, they solve it together, on to the next
thing. Phyllida veers too close for my taste to the manic pixie dream
girl: her solution to almost every puzzle is "draw a parallel with the
dogs she's rescued", and while her mood may rise or fall she has no
development; at the end of the book she is happy to go away with a
relative stranger (who might well be, and indeed proves to be, lying)
to kick off the final scenes.
Arthur on the other hand does have an arc, but it's mostly of the
form "I hate myself and I am useless." "But I love you." "Maybe I am
not so useless after all." Yes, Matthews has done much better than
this in her other work.
One advantage of the closed-bedroom-door style that Matthews favours
is that one can't hang the story on the principals' animal lust, and
she does a good job of showing how each of them moves their view of
the other from stranger to beloved. Another is that they can't solve
everything by rutting; they have to talk to each other!
Not Matthews on top form, then, but so far I have enjoyed even the
less-good books of hers.