A Fan's Playground

Yes, more Heyer again. And oh dear, this one was even more stressful than Friday's Child. A romance where the marriage happens before the beginning of the book, this one features two people who fell in love at first sight and got married while believing that the other doesn't love them back. And then Nell finds out second-hand fairly early on that actually her husband does love her back! But she feels she can't make her love clear to him until she deals with a money situation she's in, because she doesn't want him to think she's pretending to love him for pecuniary reasons. And then the whole rest of the book (other than the parts focused on the b-romance) is about Nell trying to figure out how to get the money she needs to pay a large bill without talking to her very rich husband who loves her. OKAY Georgette Heyer, you can write a romance novel like that if you want to, but I must own it's not very satisfying to me as a romance!

Also it's just not comfortable to read a book so (uncritically) focused on the gender dynamics wherein a married woman is wholly dependent on an allowance from her husband for money.

Also there's a Jewish moneylender. He doesn't appear in person so it's not as bad as in The Grand Sophy, but it's still not great.

I skimmed much of the second half of the book because it was too stressful and not fun for me. Why do I do this to myself.