This is our review for The Runaway Heiress – a (somewhat) steamy Regency romance by Emma Orchard.
Star rating
Pepper rating (find our Pepper scale here)
Book Review:
The Runaway Heiress by Emma Orchard came to me as a “blind date with a book” from my local library. For those unfamiliar, a blind date with a book is where a book is wrapped up with paper (in this case Christmas wrap for ‘twas the season) and then there are a few things to help you decide if you want to give it a try. This one was Regency. Romance. Raunchy. Well, they had me at “raunchy.” So my paperback and I settled in to find out what indecent delights could be found between the covers.
Our runaway heiress, Cassandra, is a lass from Yorkshire who’d been locked up by her uncle so he could control her fortune. The book opens with her seeking refuge in a manor house in London overnight on her flight from her captor and his unseemly friend who was to marry her by his arrangement. Earl Irlam, Hal by his Christian name, finds Cassandra asleep on the settee in his library and after hearing her story vows to protect her. They make their way to Brighton for the season and it is there that the majority of the story takes place. But, like any good regency gentleman, he wars with his expectations as a gentleman and his desires as a man.
The thing that made this book enjoyable also almost made it unenjoyable for me. The author does a great job of setting the tone in a realistic way with her use of authentic language. Each different class of character has a different dialect as well, which adds to the authenticity of this work. However, it was almost so authentic that I had to search again and again for words to fully grasp the meaning. I’m not one, despite my proclivity to read spicy books, who is ill-read. But I had to keep going back to Google again and again. I could grasp the general meaning through context but it significantly slowed down my reading, and therefore my ability to get sucked into the story. One example, when I looked it up, was listed as “a very rare phrase of 16th century slang.” Ok, well this is set in the regency period (late 1700s- mid-1800s and this was indeed set at least in the mid-1800s because it references the tale of Snow White which wasn’t penned until 1812) and therefore maybe that was a little too niche for the language expected of the time period for a story mostly being enjoyed by a modern reader.
As for raunchy, well, you can guess by my 1 pepper rating that this was little more than a closed door romance. There are a few spicy scenes that some might describe as raunchy, especially when approached with the Regency era sensibilities of a virginal bride who has been cloistered away until her family needs her to secure the family fortune through marriage. But not for a modern reader of spicy (or smutty) historical romance books.There was one hot and heavy scene in a side room away from the ballroom where everything stayed over the clothes and then 2-3 explicit scenes after their marriage. Otherwise, it was a fairly typical romance and I enjoyed it, hence the 3* rating, but not enough to try her other work in the same world, The Second Lady Silverton – also touted as a book for lovers of Bridgerton.
Leave a Reply