As always, Georgette nails her period and makes me want to invest time with her characters. ( )

Basic Reason for Beginning: Well, I'd been hearing about Heyer across the blogosphere for a while and finally decided to buy a book. This sounded like it might be a good, fun introduction, so I bought it. And then I decided to read it as my 'Alternate with coursework' book because it sounded like a light romp of romantic fun.
Basic Reason for Finishing: It's exactly what it sounds. A light, fun read.
Texture: Silky? (I'm sorry, I read most of it over the course of last week and the week before and now that I've finally returned to it, I have a cold. I'm just glad I managed following the main line.

Full review here

Book Rereadability: You know, I'm not sure I'm a romance rereader, but... I know very little of the Regency period. It'd be fun to reread it with some more knowledge of the period in my head and see how much more I pick up.
Author Rereadability: Oh, yes. I will definitely want to read more of Heyer's works. She's one of those authors that shows me just why I want to wing out of fantasy reading some more. I'd never have encountered this otherwise.
Recommendation: Urk. And here you put me in a bind. I'd say anyone with an interested in historical romances would do well to pick this up, but they're likely the people who're already aware of the book's existence and, anyway, I don't know how well it stands up to others. I think it would make a neat introduction into the genre if you enjoy romances, though. (I can't, consciously, say it's my first brush with it, but I can say it's my first brush with historical romance set in this time period.) If that makes sense. ( )

Delightful. I loved it.

Freddy was the most unlikeliest of heroes and I loved seeing his character progress gradually throughout the book.

And Dolphinton was such a kick in the head! What a nut. ( )

******SPOILERS, but nothing unexpected for a Heyer romance***********

There is something peculiarly satisfying about this book, in which Heyer puts her usual hero types into the background and brings her usual comic-relief Tulip to the foreground as an unexpected hero.

Kind-hearted man-about-town Freddie, who agrees to fake an engagement to his cousin Kitty (previously inaccurated rendered by me as Kate) so that she can enjoy a month in London (and make the man she really loves jealous), is like Bertie Wooster transported to the Regency era. Or, at least, everyone who knows him thinks he's Woosterish, including his sardonic father and the dashing object of Kitty's affections. Both of these men are the sorts of characters Heyer more usually casts as her heroes, and it is in the subverting of the expectations of the genre that Heyer has her triumph in "Cotillion." Freddie isn't stupid. It's just that he never has much of anything to think about, so he doesn't. Think, that is. But when he has a problem to solve, he has the knowledge of his social world and the people in it to figure things out. And he is surprisingly hard to bully.

One of the pleasures of "Cotillion" is that we see exactly why Freddie begins to take his engagement to Kitty seriously, and we see exactly why she comes to appreciate him. He not only has address; he is steadfast. Papageno gets his Papagena, and the cotillion of love confirms the Shakespearian dictum that man is a giddy thing. Indeed, Heyer leads her pairs of lovers through the dance with an almost Shakespearian grace.

I will add that my favorite secondary character is Freddie's father, the most suavely sinister and hilariously unflappable parent since Justin, the Duke of Avon. I sometimes do a mental casting of Heyer's books as movies, and Freddie's father is definitely a Christopher Plummer role.

This is a difficult one to rate; the first half was so silly and so boring I almost started skimming. It reads like third-drawer Wodehouse; I love Wodehouse, but Heyer wasn't witty enough to pull it off.

Now, the second half of the book was a great improvement - the barest hints of the romance begin to manifest, and the plot takes on some urgency.

The last few chapters were marvellous, and I was entirely on their side by the last. If she could have sustained that quality through the entire book, it would be a five star rating above. If I had stopped reading halfway through, I would have given it two stars at best. ( )