"Once Upon a Blue Moon" +
Jun. 24th, 2008 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiefoeTen years ago, it was the kind of book that I sighed over. And now people don't use phrases like 'disdainfully handsome' anymore. Penelope Williamson kept the star-crossed lovers very busy. In the first half, there were -
-- an explosion from an experimental steam boiler
-- crash of a motorized carriage after a house party
-- a country fair and a grinning contest
-- a horse race and display of equestrian acrobatics
-- a narrow escape from the guagers (exercise man)
-- saving a baby from a discarded mine shaft
-- catching philchards from a sea boiling with them
-- a seagull attack on her pet cat
The pace slackened somewhat in the second half -
-- a horse race lost; a horse race won (followed by a grandmother's death)
-- a marriage of convenience; death of the monied bride
-- an explosion in the mine; an explosion on the railroad
-- a house fire
-- an explosion from an experimental steam boiler
-- crash of a motorized carriage after a house party
-- a country fair and a grinning contest
-- a horse race and display of equestrian acrobatics
-- a narrow escape from the guagers (exercise man)
-- saving a baby from a discarded mine shaft
-- catching philchards from a sea boiling with them
-- a seagull attack on her pet cat
The pace slackened somewhat in the second half -
-- a horse race lost; a horse race won (followed by a grandmother's death)
-- a marriage of convenience; death of the monied bride
-- an explosion in the mine; an explosion on the railroad
-- a house fire
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Mary Balogh's "An Unacceptable Offer" offers a neat quartet: A handsome widowed viscount and his plain but adventuresome friend; an almost on-the-shelf lady and her cousin who pretends to be a pretty ninnyhammer.
