Georgette Heyer - A Civil Contract

Author: Georgette Heyer

Title: A Civil Contract

Language: English

Format: paperback

Rating: 3 stars

No of pages: 384

Reading challenge: A historical novel

Read: 13.01.2018

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Adam Deveril, a hero of Salamanca, returns from the Peninsula War to find his family on the brink of ruin and his ancestral home mortgaged to the hilt. He is now Viscount Lynton, with the responsibility of saving the estate, and the only way to do so is to marry an heiress. He is introduced to Mr. Jonathan Chawleigh, a City man of apparently unlimited wealth and no social ambitions for himself -- but with his eyes firmly fixed on a suitable match for his only daughter, the quiet and decidedly plain Jenny Chawleigh.

A Civil Contract is not the first book I've read by the fabulous Georgette Heyer nor is it second or third. In fact, it's seventeenth (!) and I dare say that I'm rather familiar with Heyer's writing style by now, BUT this one was actually rather different from her other works that I've come across before.

I liked this novel for what it was. It was a rather refreshing take on all regency novels despite the fact Heyer wrote it several decades ago. Why was it refreshing? Because the heroine wasn't pretty, she was short, a bit stout, a bit too frank, and her heritage was not genteel. Her marriage with the hero was exactly what's advertised on the cover - a civil contract that had benefits for both parties, but there was no lust between them. It's a bit spoilerish, so you've been warned (!), but by the time they've been married for more than a year, had a child, they're simply content with one another. There's no big love, declarations of passion and lust, but simple and pure content with the life they have. 

Although it is refreshing, it also isn't the thing I was expecting when I brought the book home from the library. I expected the feelings to grow - which they did, to an extent - I simply expected to see a similar ending to other Heyer novels I've read, but I didn't get it. It was a good book, but I don't think I'll re-read this one.