Rebecca Hagan Lee

A Regency Holiday is a solid collection of Christmastime novellas. The four have a bit of a rushed feel in parts, understandably due to their shortened size, but the overall effect of each is still a well-written story that leaves you with a warm glow. They all take place around the Christmas season, but they don't smack you in the face with overly saccharine seasonal sweetness, or use Christmas as an eye-rollingly obvious plot device, which is nice. I've made it a point to try and read show more Christmas-themed books this holiday season, and have found that for some reason the historical ones have by far been more satisfying reads than the contemporary--and this anthology is a perfect example. Of the four, the first and the last ("Coventry's Christmas" by Rebecca Hagan Lee and "Home for Christmas" by Alicia Rasley) were my favorites, but the other two (Lynn Kerstan's "Star of Wonder" and Allison Lane's "A Christmas Homecoming") were just as enjoyable. Any of them would benefit from being written into a full-length novel, but readers don't feel cheated at all with the shorter format. I hadn't read anything by any of the four authors before, but my experience with this collection will definitely have me looking for more from all of them in the future. show less

A Regency-set historical romance featuring a marriage of convenience is nothing new. A hero who has sworn not to marry until duty forces it of him is also nothing new. A heroine who is unlike the other girls of the ton, wanting to have the freedom to pursue her own interests is, you guessed it, still nothing new. And yet Lee has managed to create a rather charming story with these common elements.

Griffin and his cronies at school formed the Free Fellows League vowing to not only stay show more unmarried as long as possible but to never let a wife interfere with their desire to serve their country or to worm her way into their hearts. To this effect, they drew up a contract and each signed it. Fast forward years to a short time after Griffin has accepted a commission in the Guard to go and fight Napoleon. His father, the Earl of Weymouth, demands that he marry and at least attempt to sire an heir before he goes off to be shot at. Griffin gives in to this request unwillingly but he eventually meets and appreciates Alyssa, the youngest daughter of the Earl of Carrington, who is completely uninterested in marriage and all its trappings. Alyssa just wants to be left in peace to design and care for gardens but her parents are determined to marry her off. She and Griffin have an immediate attraction. She has no objection to the idea of her new bridegroom heading off to war and he has a large neglected garden in need of rejuvenation. A match just waiting to be made. A large part of the book deals not only with the two of them getting to the altar, but also with them learning all about each other in the brief space of their two week marriage. They find that they have been serendipitous in their choice of each other both in terms of physical attraction but also in their similar thinking. And then Griffin goes off to war, experiences the horrors he never imagined, and realizes that he only wants to go home and love and be loved by his wife. But love was never in the bargain they made.

It was refreshing to read a story where the conflict between the characters was not an issue of misunderstanding or lack of communication. And although neither character wants to admit to their love for the other because of the Free Fellows' pledge (which Alyssa is not supposed to know about but does), their hearts are always obvious. The Free Fellows' League was a bit of a silly conceit but perhaps there's more substance to it in the following two books of the trilogy. Also, the charter itself was a bit sophisticated in understanding for boys of their age and would have been more likely to come from almost teens but that's a negligible complaint. I was pleased to see that the villain in this book was not a cut and dried villain and one who did not wish either the hero or heroine bodily or emotional harm and who actually turned out to be a decent guy. The fact that Lee neatly sidesteps many of the common plot devices found in Regency-set romances these days made this an enjoyable read. show less

I really enjoyed this story of a group of boys who, at 9, decide that they're going to resist being married and not get caught up in romance, at all. Griffin wanted the life he imagines of a soldier, but in order to take up his commission he has to marry, to ensure his bloodline. Alyssa is a frustrated gardener and scientist and would rather be doing than dressing up and trying to find a suitable husband. Her mother has Plans but so does she and when she sees Gabriel there's an instant show more attraction. But he only has a small window to woo her and love her and when he comes back he's left with scars and he's not sure that she should have to deal with them.

I liked them and it and could see progress in both of them over time. I'd read more by this author and I'm curious about the rest of this series. show less

The second installment in Lee's Free Fellows League trilogy, this is the story of Colin McElreath, Lord Grantham, and Gillian Davies. The Free Fellows vowed as young boys to remain single and to serve their country above all else. And they do serve their country as spies and code breakers but they cannot escape the bonds of matrimony forever. Opening with Colin having just evaded an assassin while on assignment in Scotland, he sees the blurred outline of a woman waiting at a window in an inn show more no decent woman should patronize and is intrigued despite himself. When he discovers that he has unpleasant company awaiting him in his own room, he slips into the woman's room where she sleepily mistakes him for her new husband, Colin Fox. They spend a chaste few hours in bed holding each other and in the end, when Colin slips away, he leaves the woman the money to pay off the innkeeper and to return to her home, knowing that she has been abandoned.

The woman Colin thus rescued is Gillian Davies, who had run to Scotland to elope with the dashing Colin Fox. Of course, she is ruined but her family is trying to keep a lid on the scandal by claiming that she was visiting relatives in the country even while her father has engaged a Bow Street runner to investigate and find Colin Fox. The problem is that there is no such person, the name being a nom de guerre that Colin McElreath sometimes uses on his missions. And so the Bow Street runner's investigations are dangerously close to exposing important War Office work. Colin meets with Baron Davies and the runner to explain the problem and in the end, agrees to marry the ruined Gillian in order to call off the investigation despite not being the one to have ruined her. Colin needs to continue to search for the person using his alias, knowing that the man is more than just a despoiler of young women and is more than likely in league with Napoleon but he is also rather in need of the obscene amount of money that Baron Davies offers as Gillian's dowry. And while these circumstances seem as if they should make for a hostile bride and groom, they don't, with each of the characters accepting fate with equanimity.

Once this arranged marriage happens, rather than allowing a love to grow over time, our characters fall in love with unconvincing haste. Colin offers not to consummate their marriage until they know each other better, Gillian accepts with relief, and yet less than two pages later, they are all in. Apparently both of them were open books so the getting introduced phase didn't have to last even a day. In addition to this annoying trend in romances (deep abiding love based on nothing more substantial than air), Lee also has some niggling historical inaccuracies in here which will stick in the craw of sticklers. The narrative also suffers from unevenness, plodding in the beginning and warp speed in the end with no appreciable build to link the two. All in all, it's an awkward book. Since I have the third, I will be reading it to round out the series, but I'm hoping for more than I found in this one. show less