A Warm and Witty Regency-Era Romance
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An Unlikely Proposition Book Cover An Unlikely Proposition
Unexpected Seasons
Rosalyn Eves
Teen and Young Adult Historical Romance
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
March 5, 2024
EBook, Hardcover
304

A standalone companion to An Improbable Season, this Regency romance ⁠― perfect for fans of Bridgerton ― is about following your heart, pursuing your dreams, and falling head over heels in love.

Eleanor did not come to London to be proper and boring. After the death of her husband and a year of mourning, the seventeen year old wants nothing more than her independence and to have a little fun. She’s hardly looking to remarry, despite pressures from her late husband’s nephew, who is keen on obtaining her inheritance. Eleanor quickly devises a plan that includes a fake engagement. What’s not a part of the plan? Falling for a dashing, quiet man outside of her social circle – a man who is not her betrothed. Can she survive the Season with her heart and her fortune intact?

Thalia is determined to begin afresh after a disastrous first Season in London. No romantic distractions, but only her work as a poet and newfound companion to Eleanor. Determined to get her poems published, she struggles to be taken seriously as a female writer. As the spring progresses, Thalia does not expect to take interest in a man from her past (a man who is engaged to her employer, no less!), but some feelings demand to be felt even if the timing isn’t quite right.

Rosalyn Eves's An Unlikely Proposition is a transportive Regency drama that captures the sparkle of London, thrill of friendship, and swoon of new love.

 

“What is the point of having money and independence,” Eleanor Lockhart asked, “if one must still be proper?”

From the first line, Rosalyn Eves had me smiling at this witty Regency romance story, An Unlikely Proposition. Book 2 in the Unexpected Seasons series, this story also is a standalone romance. In it we meet two main characters, Eleanor and Thalia, who develop a friendship after Thalia is hired by Eleanor to be her companion. A widow at only 17 years old, Eleanor holds a considerable fortune and, with it, considerable pressure from the ton to find herself another husband. The sticking point? If she remarries, she loses her inheritance. Unless, of course, she marries the man it would go to in the event she remarries — her late-husband’s nephew, a proper Regency-era villain and a man she utterly detests. Thus, the marriage games (or rather marriage avoidance games) begin with a fake engagement, a pair of women who are determined to remain unattached and unhindered, the men who ultimately capture their hearts, and a few social gaffes along the way.  

Two gold wedding bands on a page of the dictionary showing the word "marriage"


Fans of Regency-era romances will appreciate some of the familiar themes in this narrative: finding love across boundaries of class and wealth, the mark of true gentlemen (who are always seemingly outnumbered by the rakes), the glitter and drama of the Season in London, and the plight of smart women who must play by the rules of society or risk disgrace. It rings true with the language and writing as well, with just a touch of contemporary humor.

Yet in this story readers also find a few elements that make this story unique. One is the presence of Regency-era poets as minor characters. Thalia is determined to become a published poet and finds herself in a circle of intellectuals, artists, poets, and writers by way of an invitation from her brother. I appreciated the care that the author took to select poets from this time, including John Keats and Samuel Coleridge, and referenced some of their works. I was surprised when their representation in the story was rooted in the patriarchal thinking of the time. Eves did not make these poets feminist simply because they were romantic. On the contrary, she situated them as part of the stumbling points for Thalia’s entry into a male-dominated profession.

 The burning inside her grew hotter. “So a poet, if he is a man, has the whole spectrum of human experience before him: history, myth, love, war, science, art. He might even write about the domestic, as Wordsworth had done. But a female poet must confine herself only to what is deemed feminine? How is that fair?”

It is hard for Thalia to feel seen and heard in her chosen profession. In a similar way, Eleanor also yearns to take off the mask of propriety and expectation of the ton and find what truly makes her happy. The theme of being seen and heard is clear in the tender relationships that develop between the main characters, no less so than in the characters who fall in love. At the height of swoon-worthy romantic confessions, Thalia’s gentleman declares:

“But this Season, I met a woman who was not simply beautiful, or kind, or funny.She also had a depth to her and an ambition that made me, for the first time in my life, wish that I had a depth that might match hers, an ambition to be more….As she is always wonderfully, beautifully–sometimes disastrously–herself, it was impossible not to see her. It was equally and damnably impossible not to love her. The miracle, though, is that I think she saw me too.” 

The strength and sweetness of both Eleanor and Thalia’s story was in their journey to find their sense of belonging — of belonging to themselves, of belonging to their lovers, and belonging to what they’ve found as a new family together. Eleanor’s journey ends with a revelation of her own: “Home, for me, has always been people. For these last weeks, home has meant you.”

An Unlikely Proposition was a warm and witty read. For more of Rosalyn Eves’s Regency-era romances (and the first story where we meet Thalia), check out Book 1, An Improbable Season.