Fieldnotes:
Yorkshire, England, Regency

1 Mercenary (By Necessity) Beautiful Teen Girl Seeking Wealthy Spouse
2 Awful, Miserly Stepsisters (Cinderella Style)
1 Charming Heiress Artist with Smallpox Scars

Unsuitable Suitors
1 Handsome Baron with an Unfortunate Name
1 Intelligent Aristocrat with Excellent Dancing Skills
1 Brusque, Preoccupied, Financially-Minded Young Man Short on Social Niceties but Large of Heart
Meddling Matchmaking Oblivious to Everyone's True Feelings Ostensibly For Their Own Good

1 Crumbling Castle
2 Plot Moppets
1 Adorable and Persistent Dog
Scandalous Reading Material!

1 Gorse Bush Whose Buzzy Occupants Do Not Appreciate Dramatically Morbid Poetry Recitations and Who Express Their Critique Through Stinging
1 Near Drowning
1 Large, Barely Sentient Cloud of Curious Sheep
Laundry - A Novel Experience for a Handkerchief
Calamity!!!

The Short Version:
Kind of I Capture the Castle meets Austen (though perhaps more Emma than P&P).
We have our beautiful teen heroine determined to save the family fortune by marrying well, but scaring off suitors by being too forthright. We have a castle that keeps reminding me of the one in Disney's The Sword in the Stone with its crumbling and leaking (no cantankerous owls, though, more's the pity). We have a handsome aristocrat and his tactlessly brusque cousin (in TRADE!) and terrible selfish stepsisters. It is all fairly predictable in a very enjoyable sort of way, and the phrasing (particularly the gorse bush scene) made me laugh. Happy to keep this one around. ( )

On the regency romance scale, this ranks smack in the middle between [a:Julia Quinn|63898|Julia Quinn|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1210188891p2/63898.jpg] and [b:Pride and Prejudice|1885|Pride and Prejudice|Jane Austen|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320399351s/1885.jpg|3060926]. It's fun and quick to read like a JQ, but it's also refined and observant like P&P.

Our heroine Althea starts out a little ruthless. At 17, her mission in life is to marry a rich man to save her family from near poverty. As is common in books likes these, a handsome young man in possession of a good fortune moves into Althea's neighborhood and the chase ensues. Add in Althea's wicked-ish stepsisters, a ridiculous crumbling castle, and some excellent verbal sparring and you've got a truly enjoyable tale worthy of comparisons to Jane Austen. ( )

Althea’s family’s home is falling into disrepair and the only way to save it is if she marries someone wealthy.

Initially I found Althea’s narration twee and irritating, but I liked her more as I got to judge her by what she does and not just by what she says about herself, and I became even more interested in her story once I realised that Althea’s an unreliable narrator. She’s not unreliable in a dramatic or malicious way, she’s just a somewhat sheltered seventeen year old. But I enjoyed reading between the lines and speculating about the things Althea misses. This ended up being a lot of fun.

The world, at least the provincial, day-to-day world in which I live, does not honour those who make so much as those who own. To be a wealthy landowner of good family is to belong to the most respected class of people in England, and therefore in the world as a whole. Yet when we look back upon the past it is the artists and thinkers whose names are remembered and whose legacy is honoured, not those who are merely wealthy and well-bred. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed it! I started it yesterday evening and stayed up until I was finished. Certain elements are definitely borrowed from Austen but it's well written and enjoyable reading. ( )

Hilarious! The tone and the plot of this book seem almost as if the Author has thrown Jane Austen over her lap and is spanking her. And maybe I'm just in that mood but I was genuinely delighted with this frothy romp. As another reviewer has remarked- it bears a great resemblance to Austen, Downton Abbey, Wrede's Sorcery and Cecelia and (so they say, but I have never read it) I Capture the Castle. I shall have to read it to find out.
Althea was my favorite kind of character, Mr. Fredericks- even more so, and the situation? A disaster. But somehow Althea copes and, in the end, everything turns out well in an unexpectedly nonchalant way. ( )