Review of charming gilded age romance Bookshop Cinderella by Laura Lee Guhrke and my musings on why my ignorance makes me prefer Regency romances over gilded age romances

 

I've run across a few gilded age romances recently.  I tend to not like them as much as I like Regency romances, simply because gilded age stories bump up against the 20th century and I find myself thinking about the children of the main characters, who will be part of the lost generation that fought and died in World War I and, if they survived that, faced the 1919 influenza pandemic.  My understanding of English and European history in the 19th century after the Napoleonic wars is much shakier.  Yes, during the Regency era England was profiteering from the slave trade and was a huge colonialist power spreading misery throughout the world.  But the characters in Regency romances  seem far removed from that.  There may be a very occasional mention of the sugar trade or India or something, but in general Regency romances are balls and governesses and mean girls and painting with oils.  So I suspend my disbelief.  

All of this has little to do with gilded age romance Bookshop Cinderella by Laura Lee Guhrke, which is a well written book with a sweet story.  It starts of sort of My Fair Lady-ish.  Hero Max is a duke who bets some friends that he can make heroine Evie, an almost impoverished bookstore owner, the belle of a ball.  Luckily, the book does not descend far into Pygmalion territory.  Evie is a well-educated business owner who attended finishing school and can hold her own.  All she needs is some tailored dresses and some sleep.  There's not a whole lot of conflict as she and Max fall in love, but they are both likeable characters and I was glad to see them get their happily ever after.

On the conflict front, Guhrke does her best but it takes away from the story.  Evie has a childhood friend, Rory, who has been abroad and has come back very handsome.  At the beginning of the book she thinks they may have a future together.  There was really no reason for Guhrke to make Rory a cad and a con artist.  It does nothing for Evie's characterization that she does not realize that he is taking advantage of her, even though he eats her out of house and home, is rude to her, and gives her terrible gifts.  Evie is supposed to be smart, certainly too smart to fall for someone like this.  The book would have been better served if Rory were a legitimate potential husband who genuinely liked Evie.  He could have been a foil to Max, and Evie could have made a real choice between a safe, good life and the hard work of learning to be a duchess with her true love.  

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