Powder and Patch
Georgette Heyer
160 pages
published in 1923

Yes, this is a Regency romance. Worse, it's a Regency romance originally published by Mills and Boons! You should've heard my girlfriend roll her eyes when I told her I'd just read it... "If you want 18th century stories, read the real thing, not these pastiches!".

So why do I read this then? Well, why not? I've never been one to keep myself to outmoded gender stereotypes anyway. Also, various people whose opinions I respect seem to think Georgette Heyer can write pretty darn well.

And I have to say, I quite enjoyed Powder and Patch. Yes, this is lightweight fluff, but it's *fun* lightweight fluff. It's romantic without being soppy and it has a sense of humour.

Philip Jettan is somewhat of a "country bumpkin", unwilling to become the sophisticated refined man about town his father and the girl he loves want him to be. He has no interest in the arts of fashing, courting. the pleasures of polite society or dueling. But when a pretender to the hand of the fair Cleone arrives, he feels he has to and travels to Paris to become the man Cleone wants him to be.

It goes without saying that when he returns to London things don't go as smoothly between him and Cleone as they both had hoped. Misunderstandings abound and hijinks ensue before everything ends up just right..

On the whole this read pretty smoothly and the plot twists and misunderstandings felt natural, not forced. There was only one section I was a bit uncomfortable with, a speech by an elder female character to the hero about how all girls want a strong man and girls just cannot think rationally at all. Though even that is weakened when she immediately add that she had always been different.