An Excellent Traditional Romance in the Style of Georgette Heyer

 The Country Gentleman by Dinah Dean received a rave review on a social media site which intrigued me enough that I bought it.

I’m a cranky critic and I’d give it six stars if book ratings went that high. It’s that good.

What did I love about it?

This is a traditional Regency romance set in a village among gentry and common folk. No titles, no fabulous balls, and no sex. A Georgette Heyer or Jane Austen sort of novel, with some wit, deft characterization, and a smooth, clear style.   

Excellent writing in addition to the style: no grammatical infelicities, no typos that I noticed (except one or two introduced by the scanning process (the book was originally published in 1986).

Ms. Dean’s grasp of the period goes well beyond the average. The characters are not 20^th or 21^st century people in costume; their attitudes and behavior feel right for the period. They eat what people actually did eat at the time (not a chocolate or a scone in sight, because bon-bons and scones as we know them did not yet exist).  She knows that while in the Regency “Corinthian” referred to a sporting gentleman, earlier it meant something quite different (“a very impudent, harden’d, brazen-fac’d fellow”, from a 1699 dictionary of cant terms).

Her descriptions of Woodham and the surrounding countryside are so rich and convincing that the background is almost another character.    

If you enjoy romance in the Georgette Heyer manner, you should not miss this book. I’m going to go on a Dinah Dean reading binge.

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