This traditional Regency Romance gets off to such a cracking start I thought I had a keeper on my hands. In the opening chapter Aurora McPhee stands at the altar with her handsome groom. Just as the vicar is saying "If anyone here knows just cause why these two should not be joined," in runs Kenyon Warriner, Earl of Windham, with the news that the groom is a bigamist. Kenyon has been tracking the cad for days. One of the groom's many brides is Kenyon's own sister, Brianna. Poor Aurora cries that she is ruined. Kenyon offers for her immediately. Soon the two strangers are married and heading off to London.
The first few chapters of A Worthy Wife are beautifully written and very amusing. The wedding night scene has a twist that was wholly unexpected. I can't give you the details because it's a surprise but Metzger gives the phase "big misunderstanding" a whole new meaning and I was hooting with laughter.
Then suddenly, after the wedding night, A Worthy Wife seems to lose its way. It's as though the author, having finished one story, needed to tack on another, and another and another to fill up the pages. Aurora and Kenyon need obstacles to their union to make the book interesting. But instead of having those obstacles flow logically from character, the obstacles in A Worthy Wife seem to jump from nowhere.
A Worthy Wife has at least six plots, and all of them are extremely ordinary. There is a secondary love story of Brianna, Kenyon's sister, and a highwayman, and another secondary love story of Christopher, the hero's brother and one of the cad's ex-wives. A third plot casts doubts about Aurora's parentage. A fourth arises when Kenyon turns out to have a son of questionable birth. Then Kenyon becomes ill. All this activity provides reasons why Aurora and Kenyon aren't together, but they lack unity and instead have the air of kitchen-sink plotting.
Kenyon makes an adequate hero, though he seems rather inconstant. After the wedding, there is a sequence where the couple try for an annulment. One minute he wants it, then he doesn't, then he isn't sure. And Aurora is similarly confusing. She is initially described as rather ordinary looking. Then she is seen as beautiful. Her behavior is often quirky and eccentric (she buys sickly animals and hires unemployed veterans) but it seems artificial, perhaps because we don't know enough about her to understand why she does all of these things.
A two hundred and fourteen page book is too short for so many stories. Space taken up by all this action is done at the expense of character development. For example, the two secondary love stories are little more than humorous descriptions of couples eyeing each other, kissing and, on occasion, crying. We really don't know enough about these people to care whether they get together or not. There are some very funny lines in this book, but too much of the comedy is slapstick derived from accidents rather than from character.
I greatly enjoyed the first fifty pages of A Worthy Wife, but the rest of the book was only mildly amusing. If you are a Barbara Metzger fan you might enjoy it. If you are not familiar with Barbara Metzger's work, see if you can pick up a copy of Snowdrops and Scandalbroth. That is a book that I can recommend without reservation.
Sensuality: Subtle
Publication Date: 2000
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