Historical purists should run a mile, but others looking for a quick, fun, altogether charming romance could do far worse than checking out An Unexpected Pleasure.

To be honest, Candace Camp is an uneven writer for me, sometimes striking the right notes and sometimes not coming even close. Still, even though I’m the first to admit that this story is improbable and the romance between a marquess and a lower class Irish American highly unlikely, the characters were so likable and the story so absorbing, that I found myself happily turning pages and relishing the author’s breezy story-telling style.

Young New York journalist Megan Mulcahey travels to England with her sister and father for an important mission: To find out the truth behind her brother’s death ten years earlier while on an expedition up the Amazon and to somehow bring to justice the man – Theo Moreland, Marquess of Raine – she believes murdered her brother. Since the murder occurred far from civilization, Megan bases her belief on information she receives from a member of the party who heard the tale from another member of the expedition. Theo, the witness reported, murdered the young man following a quarrel.

Of course, the vast differences between the world of the Mulcaheys and Theo’s elevated position in society make contact difficult, so Megan – in a scene that reminded me of the misadventures of the family’s hound in Heyer’s classic Frederica – somehow manages to convince Theo’s mother that she would be an ideal tutor for her adolescent twin sons. Working in the house, she reasons, will give her an ideal chance to investigate Theo and get to the bottom of the matter.

Expecting to find the man she believes murdered her brother to be a repulsive and selfish aristocrat, Megan is disconcerted to discover that handsome Theo is charming, friendly, and altogether a very nice guy. While that’s bad enough, what she doesn’t know is something the young women would find even more disquieting: Stunned Theo instantly recognizes Megan as the same young woman who appeared to him in a vision while he suffered from a life-threatening fever on that same Amazonian expedition.

Of course, it’s no surprise where this story is going, but that doesn’t make getting there any less fun. Theo and his family are all thoroughly charming and likable (and known to readers from previous books in the series) and Megan herself is spunky (in a good way), smart, and resolute. She is also refreshingly able to admit she’s wrong when she is.

What didn’t work quite as well for me were a few paranormal elements (such as the vision mentioned earlier) that seemed kind of shoved in – they simply weren’t explored enough to make them believable parts of the story. Nevertheless, while I didn’t find the paranormal elements to be especially compelling, they also didn’t unnecessarily intrude on my fun.

Additionally, I hope you’ll take this for what it’s worth, but even though I don’t usually notice how long – or short – a book is, I’d be interested to know just what the word count is for this one. The type appears to be quite large and, unlike my usual pattern of taking six to eight hours or so to finish a book, I managed to read the entirety of An Unexpected Pleasure far faster. Charming though the book may be, it is a bit on the skimpy side.

Once again, I’ll repeat the warning I started with since I really, really mean it: Camp’s new book is most emphatically not for readers who hate Wallpaper historicals and who demand complete accuracy and a pitch-perfect historical voice. But readers who can suspend disbelief and get behind crusading female reporters, democratically minded aristocrats, and a rambunctious family straight out of a sitcom (a good one, though – think Frasier not Full House), might well find An Unexpected Pleasure to be exactly that.