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A review by esdeecarlson
How to Woo a Wallflower by Virginia Heath
4.0
[This title was provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review]
4 stars
A highly enjoyable regency romance that helped me out of a reading slump, featuring disability representation and some truly likeable main characters.
Harriet, our heroine, is physically disabled; she walks with a heavy limp thanks to an accident in young adulthood, and knows that as a result her pool of suitors is limited mostly to noblemen too deficient in personality to attract ‘perfect’ (able-bodied) wives. Jasper, our hero, is a charming nobleman who cultivates his reputation as a rake to increase business at his gentleman’s club—meaning of course that he will never be fully respectable. The two start an unlikely but genuine friendship, which grows into a lovely romance.
One aspect of the novel I particularly enjoyed was Harriet’s commitment to charity volunteer work at a free medical clinic for impoverished youth. All too often, poor or ill children are pitiable props that romance novels use to make the heroine look saintly, but Harriet doesn’t condescend to the young man she’s coaching through recovery, rather seeing him as an equal going through the same recovery she underwent, and he is allowed his own personality and agency within the novel.
It seemed at first as though the ‘villain’ of the story would be the press or society gossip, but these played relatively minor roles. I found myself detesting Harriet’s thick-headed elder brother, who constantly tried to ‘protect’ her in ways that infantilized and humiliated her, often making her position worse than before his meddling started. That said, his role was also small, and I really enjoyed that the main conflict ended up being interpersonal rather than the work of an external villain. The real problems revolved around Jasper’s misguided attempts at ‘nobility,’ and were solved by allowing Harriet the autonomy she deserved in making her own life choices.
This is a charming romance with two fully realized main characters, both of whom I enjoyed spending my time with, and a rather accessible entry into period romance as a genre.
4 stars
A highly enjoyable regency romance that helped me out of a reading slump, featuring disability representation and some truly likeable main characters.
Harriet, our heroine, is physically disabled; she walks with a heavy limp thanks to an accident in young adulthood, and knows that as a result her pool of suitors is limited mostly to noblemen too deficient in personality to attract ‘perfect’ (able-bodied) wives. Jasper, our hero, is a charming nobleman who cultivates his reputation as a rake to increase business at his gentleman’s club—meaning of course that he will never be fully respectable. The two start an unlikely but genuine friendship, which grows into a lovely romance.
One aspect of the novel I particularly enjoyed was Harriet’s commitment to charity volunteer work at a free medical clinic for impoverished youth. All too often, poor or ill children are pitiable props that romance novels use to make the heroine look saintly, but Harriet doesn’t condescend to the young man she’s coaching through recovery, rather seeing him as an equal going through the same recovery she underwent, and he is allowed his own personality and agency within the novel.
It seemed at first as though the ‘villain’ of the story would be the press or society gossip, but these played relatively minor roles. I found myself detesting Harriet’s thick-headed elder brother, who constantly tried to ‘protect’ her in ways that infantilized and humiliated her, often making her position worse than before his meddling started. That said, his role was also small, and I really enjoyed that the main conflict ended up being interpersonal rather than the work of an external villain. The real problems revolved around Jasper’s misguided attempts at ‘nobility,’ and were solved by allowing Harriet the autonomy she deserved in making her own life choices.
This is a charming romance with two fully realized main characters, both of whom I enjoyed spending my time with, and a rather accessible entry into period romance as a genre.