A Townhouse for Tessa is the straw that broke my own poor camel’s back. It had so many errors, inaccuracies, and other problems that it has caused me to reevaluate whether I want to continue reading traditional Regency Romances.

Upon the death of her grandmother, Tessa Lockhard learns that she is not who she thinks she is. Long ago she was taken in and passed off as the Lockhards’ long lost granddaughter who was thought to be dead. When Tessa and her relatives find out who she really is, most of her relatives shun her, leaving her to count only on herself. Tessa has one hope. A mysterious solicitor is holding something for her and she is to claim it on her eighteenth birthday.

What Tessa receives on her birthday is the knowledge that she is gently born. She receives a townhouse, a small income, and decides that she will live in the townhouse with her servant friend Daisy for company and assistance. Tessa wants to ingratiate herself with her biological grandmother’s old friend, the Duchess of Delmont, in order to have access to the ton.

Tessa desires this access to the ton for two reasons. She wishes to implement a small revenge on those who turned away from her, and she also wants to know the gossip. Tessa has met a young man, Harry, who publishes a satirical newspaper, and she figures that if she supplies gossip and drawings of the people she interacts with, Harry’s paper will take off. Tessa doesn’t tell Harry who she really is because he has expressed some disgust over the behavior of the ton.

A Townhouse For Tessa is competently written and is not difficult to read, but it has so many problems that reading it fast becomes an amazingly frustrating experience. First of all, Tessa behaves as if she is living in the twentieth century. She goes to live alone in her townhouse with only her maid Daisy to help her and act as chaperone. There is simply no way this would be possible, especially for someone seeking entrance to the ton. A London townhouse required many servants just to accomplish the work its running required, and an unmarried young woman of gentle birth could not live alone with her servant without any other kind of chaperonage. As as the protégé of a duchess, Tessa would be subjected to plenty of scrutiny about her behavior.

There are also a number of title and naming issues. As no one knows the identity of Tessa’s father, the Duchess decides to call her Miss Knollwood after her grandfather’s title. This would never stand. In the absence of her actual birth name, using her adopted name would make much more sense. Also the Duchess is referred to as both Lady Sarah and Lady Delmont, both of which are incorrect. She would be the Duchess of Delmont or Your Grace.

The deus ex machina device makes numerous, very undesirable appearances. Things happen only to advance the plot, not because they make any sense or are in line with what a particular character would do. For example, Daisy needs money to establish herself as a modiste, although how she is going to do this and take care of a townhouse all by herself is not explained. So isn’t it fortuitous that Tessa just happens to come into some extra money at that particular moment?

The final straw was that the characters never came alive. Harry frequently commented on how hilarious Tessa was, but she didn’t seem even remotely funny. Daisy, Lady Delmont, Tessa’s relatives, and the evil rival widow who makes an appearance towards the end are all stock characters and remained undeveloped throughout the book. Harry was slightly appealing, but his irrational reasoning and Big-Misunderstanding-producing behavior were a turn-off..

Hmm, I didn’t realize how much I truly disliked this book until I started listing the reasons. Just in the course of writing this review, A Townhouse for Tessa has dropped a half grade from a D to a D-. Dear Reader, do yourself a favor and skip this one. Then you won’t have to feel as discouraged as I do right now about the sub-genre that brought me to romance.