Book Review: The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter

Blackwell, Lawana. 1998/2007. The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter. Bethany House.

And now with your kind indulgence, my lovely and talented daughter, Ernestine, will sing for us," Vicar Nippert announced after tea had been poured in the parlor of the vicarage behind Saint Stephen's.

The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter is the sequel to the charming novel, The Widow of Larkspur Inn. Here you'll find the continuation of the stories and characters introduced in the first novel. Julia Hollis is engaged to Vicar Andrew Phelps. Her three children are Philip, Aleda, and Grace. His two children are Elizabeth and Laurel. Taking more of a central role in this novel are Elizabeth Phelps who is being pursued by two men: Paul Treves and Jonathan Raleigh. A slightly funnier romance involves Mrs. Octavia Kingston being courted and wooed by Squire Bartley. But the couple that thoroughly charmed me this time around involves new characters. (At least I *think* they're new because I don't remember them from the first book.) Mercy Sanders, the good daughter of a grumpy rascal, and Seth Langston, a man recently released from Newgate who has a newly adopted son, Thomas.

I enjoyed revisiting these characters. And I loved the new characters introduced in the novel. There were a few lame moments in the book--scenes where the characters found themselves to be so hilariously comic that just didn't work for me. Jokes and puns that I didn't think would be funny no matter the age or decade. But overall, I enjoyed it.

The books are set in Victorian England, 1870 to be precise.