Author: Georgette Heyer
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A clean read
A bachelor in his thirties who lost his true love during their engagement a decade earlier, Sir Gareth Ludlow is on his way to propose to Lady Hester, a woman he admires but does not love. He gets sidetracked by Amanda, a young girl running away from her grandfather in hopes that her flight will somehow convince him that she should be allowed to marry the naval officer she loves. Amanda is full of stories and hijinks, and once Sir Gareth gets rejected by Lady Hester, he embarks on a quest to return Amanda safely to her family, which proves more difficult than he could ever have imagined.
While Georgette Heyer is the unrivaled champion of the Regency Romance, Sprig Muslin was not my favorite of her novels. Part of it was undoubtedly that I was listening while trying to get ready to go on vacation, so I kept walking out of the room and missing parts of the book. Part was that I was more annoyed than charmed by Amanda. Mostly, it was because I had very strong feelings about who Sir Gareth should end up with at the conclusion of the novel (NOT the sixteen-year-old he had run off to save) and I was seriously anxious that Heyer was going to take the story down the path of an April-September romance. I think I would enjoy the book a lot more upon a second read. The madcap ending reminded me of a Shakespearean comedy, with all of the silliness and all of the convenient matchmaking.
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