Well this is complicated, I admit to being half way and having no idea how our couple were going to end up together. At ~ 2/3rds distance it all got even more far fetched and ended in a whirlwind. It's fun, but slightly oddly paced.
Sylvester decides he wants a wife and goes shopping for one in the same way he'd buy a china service. His mother tells him that she'd considered pairing him , as a child, with her best friend's child, Phoebe. So he adds her to his list and goes shopping. He goes on to visit his god mother, who happens to be Phoebe's grandmother. She is in favour of the match and so sends Sylvester to the country to meet Phoebe's father. Marlow invites Sylvester to his country seat and his second wife tells' Phoebe exactly what is planned. This sends Phoebe into panic, as she had met Sylvester just the once and he was not kind, she then used him as the villain in her novel. She flees his offer before he can make it and we spend the rest of the book working these two back into the same place and into the same frame of mind, It the gets even more complicated (as if it could) when Sylvester's sister in law takes inspiration from Phoebe's book and heads abroad carrying something she shouldn't. Getting that back further complicates the issue.
It feels like this could have been somewhat shorter had both parties not been standing on ceremony half the time. They both seem to be equally full of pride, just from different causes. . Having said that, it was a diverting read that kept me wondering quite what was to happen next. ( )

I mean, just another very entertaining Heyeresque romp with lots of silliness, confusion, and the like. Enjoyable as usual. ( )

Pretty sure Sylvester (the character) is supposed to be read as arrogant and stuck-up, but Phoebe is so incredibly unlikable that I honestly couldn't bring myself to blame him for any of it. ( )

Deciding that the time has come to be married, Sylvester, Duke of Salford, arbitrarily decides to wed Phoebe Marlow, sight unseen. But when the headstrong Phoebe rejects him out of hand, Sylvester is determined to make her sorry. Things get even more complicated when Sylvester discovers that Phoebe has written a novel featuring himself as the main villain.

The two protagonists of Sylvester have separate concerns throughout most of the novel: Sylvester is determined to make Phoebe regret her decision, while Phoebe is obsessed with preventing Sylvester from finding out that she's written a Gothic novel about him. In theory, these two plot threads should intertwine and influence one another; in effect, they never come in contact. The first half of the novel deals with Sylvester's romance-novel-style "revenge;" that plot is almost entirely dropped in the second half of the novel in favor of the abrupt complications of Phoebe's novel. Sylvester feels like two separate stories spliced inexpertly together.

The worst of it is that the first half of Sylvester is good. Admittedly, Sylvester's flaws and inevitable character growth is handled with sledgehammer subtlety, but Phoebe herself -- a girl who knows her way around a stable but shrinks into a stuttering terror around her intimidating stepmother -- is quite good. In theory. But as the novel proceeds, it soon becomes apparent that while our heroine is ostensibly horse-mad and unconventional, mostly people are just going to talk about her horses and unconventionality. She never really demonstrates the alleged unconventionality, and her novelistic ambitions seem tacked-on. Thus, all the interest generated by the premise slowly peters out as characters do inconsistent things for the sake of furthering and complicating the plot. ( )

So far I've been a lukewarm reader of Georgette Heyer, but this was probably one of the more enjoyable ones I've picked up. Sylvester is a Duke who is determined to finally get married. He is the guardian of his nephew, and this and other reasons convince him that it is time to select a suitable wife. His godmother and mother have picked out a girl for him. Phoebe Marlow. He reluctantly agrees to see her but is not impressed. Neither is she. She runs away from home to avoid a marriage proposal that he had decided never to make! Naturally, snow halts her on her runaway journey, and Sylvester meets up with her on the road to London. These unorthodox circumstances allow Phoebe to speak her mind with more freeness, and she and Sylvester find themselves clashing. And then sharing a sense of humor. From then on it might be typical romantic comedy stuff, but there's another complication: Phoebe is a budding authoress who has just published her first book, and who was her model for a villain? None other than Sylvester! So thinly disguised that anyone could recognize him. Sylvester's pride and Phoebe's mortification set the town talking. ( )