The Marriage Season is excellently researched and a fun, if somewhat sedate, Regency.

Widowed thanks to the war of 1812, country mouse Sybella Lovatt is out on the marriage mart again, but not for herself. Instead, she’s searching the ton for a spouse for her younger sister, Lucie, who also happens to be her ward. The two of them and Sybella’s young son, James, hie off to London so that Lucie will have better opportunities at the tips of her fingers.

Ensconced in the home of Lucie’s godmother, Lady Godley, the two women soon find themselves juggling two suitors apiece among the whirl of their social engagements. Sybella attracts the attention of Lady Godley’s handsome and mysterious neighbor, Mr. Anthony Brabazon as well as the mad bad and dangerous to know Lord Rockliffe. Lucie, meanwhile, pulls in jocular charmball Freddie Lynwood and the pretty Valentine Ravenell. Let the courtship games begin.

The Marriage Season gets extra points for feeling like it’s actually credibly drawn straight from the balls and stables of Regency England. It gets double points for having heroines that are likable and funny – Sybella is a beekeeper! But there were a couple of details that bugged me about the book and kept me from giving it a solid A.

Fortunately, the romance isn’t the problem here. Lucie and Freddie are my favorite pair in the book; they’re both so lively and funny and quick, but to say anything more will spoil the resolution of our two love triangles. Let’s just say disreputable villains definitely pop into focus during this one and are properly nasty.

The prose is light and witty and smart, and Sybella and Lucie’s connection is wonderful and feels properly sisterly. Their banter was wonderfully spot on.

The biggest problem with this book? The Marriage Season is very horse-heavy. So horse-heavy that you’d swear it were written by a pony. Everyone is so equine-obsessed that it becomes a bit of a distraction as even little Jamie is called upon to hold court about prancing bays, using their technical names and all. Also a distraction? The way little James is written as a tiny dictionary for horsey terms; he barely comes off as an actual child for most of the book. He’s supposed to be about three, but his vocabulary doesn’t match, and often he serves as an introductory point for era-apropriate terms to the reader on top of it all, which quickly becomes very annoying.

But in the end, The Marriage Season has most of the ingredients a successful regency really needs; romance, lovable characters and solid research. But if you’re not fond of horses, it probably won’t carry you away.