The Bridal Season Mass Market Paperback – November 6, 2001

Connie Brockway always gives readers a rollicking good read, with laughter and tears and main characters who become better through their love for each other. This novel, like her others, features a top-notch cast of unique and winningly awkward secondary characters, including, in this case, a mutt called Fagin who is reChristened “Lammikins” when he (along with Letty, his mistress, our heroine) finds himself hurtled from a hard life grifting on the streets and in the theatres of Covent Garden to the swell, comfy life of a pampered lap dog at a country estate. Ever the opportunist, Letty seizes the opportunity to impersonate a wedding planner, but as the family she’s duping become her friends—and as their handsome neighbor becomes her love interest—Letty must confront her conscience and risk everything to find her happy ending. A satisfying, fun read.

This is a story about Letty Potts, the unrecognized bastard daughter of a Viscount. Letty's background is in the theatre, but more recently she has been serving as an accomplice to a rough con man, Nick Sparkle, who now wants to move up the action. Letty can't bring herself to accommodate him, he burns down the building she lives in, so Letty runs away and heads to the train station with nothing but the clothes on her back, her feisty spirit and a boat load of gumption.While at the train station, she encounters a gentleman attempting to get his lady to agree to marry him. With Letty's help, the lady says "yes," tosses her train ticket on the floor of the train station and voila! Letty has a way to escape the dastardly Nick. Unbeknownst to Letty, she has taken the place of Lady Agatha, daughter of a duke, who is a renowned wedding planner on her way to Little Bidewell, to plan the wedding of country girl Angela Bigglesworth to a Marquis of some renown. When Letty arrives at Little Bidewell, she is greeted by several prominent citizens, including the bride, the bride's mother and local magistrate, Sir Elliott March. Letty, without a feather to fly with and some of the con artist resident in her soul, decides that she will pretend to be Agatha until she can figure out a longer term plan.Letty fails to consider a few factors, including the acceptance she receives from the lovely people of Little Bidewell, her involvement with the bride's family in ways she couldn't have foreseen and then there's the handsome, Sir Elliott March. She's captivated by him, he's captivated by her and very soon they are sizzling together. One. Major. Problem. - Sir Elliott is the local magistrate. She's terrified that he will find out who she is "not" and for his part - He. Just. Wants. Her - like no other woman he has ever encountered - actually loves her. Complications ensue when Letty can't escape the situation. She is hindered at every turn. Indeed, she is trapped into planning the entire wedding. Then, just when she thinks things couldn't get worse, "Old Nick" shows up and declares they are betrothed.What to do? What to do? Letty decides she must confess to all and takes everything straight to the magistrate. The outcome isn't wrapped up as tidy as I would have liked, but in the end, all are satisfied, including me.

This 2001 Victorian romance is one of my Brockway favorites. It's fun, frothy and totally romantic. And the hero is one of my all-time favorite HR leading men. He's just so gosh-darned good and honorable (not to mention handsome, sexy and somewhat intense) that I fell in love with him right along with the heroine.The plot would make a really fun rom-com movie. Sometime music hall performer and part-time scam artist Letty Potts needs to flee London and manages to find herself masquerading as an upper-class wedding planner in a small English village. Letty, who had been sitting at Paddington railway station when the real wedding planner tossed her ticket away and eloped with her French suitor, picks up the ticket and ends up in Little Bidewell, where everyone assumes she is Lady Agatha, the wedding planner.So she assumes Lady Agatha's identity, but along the way she manages to recover the heart and conscience she had of necessity buried inside herself while in survival mode in London. Brockway makes her heroine strong and street-smart yet vulnerable and a much better and kinder person than she believes herself to be.All the characters, main and secondary, are delightful, deftly drawn and three-dimensional. And the romance? Totally romantic and swoon-worthy. This is light and frothy. In the hands of a less deft author, it would probably be the kind of romance I dislike. But Brockway writes so well, has such great characters and such excellent dialogue that there's not a trace of the silliness or absurdness that annoys me in other lightweight romances I have read.

Vivacious Letty, through happenstance, finds herself in a remote village impersonating Lady Agatha Whyte, duke's daughter and a wedding planner. Now, Letty, London music hall performer, sometimes petty con artist, must pull off a perfect wedding celebration for a daughter of the local gentry who's marrying ~gasp~ a marquis! Everyone is all aflutter, but our Letty/Agatha has flair! She can think on her feet! We hope - she hopes - she can pull it together.Enter Sir Elliot March. Now Elliot is just the man we've all been looking for. Tall - check. Gorgeous - check, check. Honorable and kind - check, check, check. Like I said...:) Elliot is a bit of a sober-sides, but that's because he's been weighed down by responsibility andddd.....he just hasn't met the right woman. Yoohoo, Letty?! Are you THE ONE???Ms. Brockway then takes us on any number of merry perambulations on the pebble-strewn (with a couple of boulders and one mid-size rock) path to a grand HEA. But will we make it? (I, personally, have every confidence in our Letty, and Elliot's no quitter.)And the final scene was straight out of a Drury Lane farce!Fun reading. :)

"The Bridal Season" is another gem of a romance written by this admirably talented author. The story is set in late Victorian England mostly in a small backwater town called Little Bidewell. Letty Pott a young and sophisticated musichall performer is desperate to get away from London and leave her problems and slightly tarnished past behind. By sheer luck she picks up a ticket at Paddington Station and travels down to Little Bidewell. To her surprise there is a friendly aristocratic family awaiting her at the station believing that she is Lady Agatha Whyte, a professional society wedding planner who came to organise Angela Bigglesworth's upcoming nuptials. Letty is a practical girl and she accepts her role with natural grace until she can get away. The Bigglesworths treat her with friendly respect and Letty's softer emotions threaten to overpower her. She meets Sir Elliot March a handsome young bachelor who is not only a good family friend but the local magistrate too. Their attraction is noticable since their first meeting and it grows from day to day. Elliot is intrigued by Letty's charming outgoing behaviour and he suspects she is hiding something. He is a dutiful young man hardened by his years in the war and he hasn't thought himself capable of love. He cannot resist Letty's natural sensuality and he decides never to let her go. Letty is full of remorse and guilt because of her deception and her growing love for Elliot makes her re-think her life when her dangerous past catches up with her. The author has a dazzling style of storytelling, which she demonstrates in this wonderful book too. Letty and Elliot are introduced to the reader with great feeling showing their deep character and human shortcomings. The secondary characters are an entertaining lot actively participating in the lives of the leading couple. The storyline is fast-paced, the dialogues well phrased and there is a good infusion of excellent humour in the story too. Ms. Brockway describes her love scenes with taste and they are passionate and sensual.THE BRIDAL SEASON is an excellent historical romance delivered by an author who can surprise her readers with refreshing plots and alluring surroundings. The book is greatly entertaining and a very fast read. I warmly recommend it to all appreciative fans of the genre.

I actually didn't like As you Desire very much, but tried C.Brockway again, anyway. And I'm so glad! The characters are extremely likeable and I was really hard pressed not to laugh out loud at times - as I was reading on the train. It's really funny and, as romance goes, very well written and entertaining. Try it, I'd guess you won't regret it. I didn't.