The Repentant Rebel

[vintageromancereader]

Fear of Falling

Miss Diana Gresham was only seventeen when she was lured by the scheming Gerald Carshin into making a ruinous misstep, only to be abandoned by that handsome scoundrel.

Now she is twenty-five, beautiful, wealthy, vibrantly intelligent, but embarrassed by her previous misjudgment and wary of her own slumbering susceptibility.

When she meets the divinely charming Captain Robert Wilson, she tells herself that this gallant officer is unlike the fops and fortune hunters who swarm around her at the fashionable resort of Bath. But could even he be trusted to want her rather than her wealth...or to take her as his bride when a scandalous rake from the past returns to embrace her again...?

Original Publisher: Signet
Original Year of Publication: 1984
Page Count: 219

This is a lovely trad Regency story, very much in the vein of Georgette Heyer. I enjoyed it immensely, though I did find the heroine a bit irritating with her constant mood swings near the end. Big Mis is not one of my favorite tropes, but it is a standard issue in trad Regencies, and this one is done with a relative minimum of fuss and muss. There was also a bit more description of kisses and the like than one usually finds in these sorts of books, which was refreshing (the lack of intimacy is my least favorite thing about trad Regency romances).

I love Ms. Ashford's work, and it was fun to dip my toe into her backlist. I've read several of her older works, as they have been reissued by her current publisher, and look forward to reading more.

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