Venetia

by Georgette Heyer, Georgette Heyer

384 pages

English language

Published May 21, 2011 by Sourcebooks Casablanca.

ISBN:: 978-1-4022-3884-0

Twenty-five-year-Venetia Lanyon's beauty is rivaled only by her sensibility. Intelligent and independent, her future seems safe and predictable. Lovely Venetia despairs of ever meeting the handsome hero of her romantic dreams, and is nearly resigned to spinsterhood, thanks to the enormous amount of responsibility she inherited, with a Yorkshire estate and an invalid but precocious brother, Aubrey. She has never been farther from home than Harrogate, nor enjoyed the attentions of any but two wearisomely persistent suitors. She does not want to marry the respectable but dull Edward Yardley - she will only marry for love.

Then her long-absent neighbor, thirty-eight-year-old Lord Jasper Damerel, returns home to Yorkshire. In an extraordinary encounter, she meets the infamous neighbor, known by reputation to be a gamester, a shocking rake, and a man of sadly unsteady character. Before she knows better, is she involved with a libertine whose way of life has scandalised the North Riding for years. Lord Damerel finds Venetia to be the most truly engaging and wittily perverse female he had encountered in all his life, and he is determined to woo and win her. He pursues her with a passionate abandon that is soon the talk of the ton. Venetia's well-ordered life is turned upside down, and she embarks upon a courtship with him that scandalises and horrifies the whole community.

But Venetia has no intention of losing her heart to the rakish lord until she is sure that beneath his swashbuckling ways and shocking manners his heart belongs to her. And Lord Damerel would marry her in a heartbeat if he did not think it would ruin her. Then she discovers a shocking family secret that changes everything. It is therefore particularly provoking that on this occasion, Lord Damerel decides to be idiotically noble.

31 editions

amyiw reviewed Venetia by Georgette Heyer

None

3 stars

3 1/2 stars
This really is in the middle of good and very good for me but I might have to bring it down for the over all story.

The good is the characters and wit throughout. The character good and bad are very well created and you definitely feel for them all though not always nicely. Venetia is a sharp and witty lady. Unluckily by just her spinsterhood is looked down as almost a girl out of the school room. To me this became tiring and the turn at the end with her going to London and discovering how much she was treated as a ninny, ended up being the down fall of this not being the great story I was hoping for. What would have occurring if she didn't discover the secrets everyone was keeping. It seemed like discovering them was all by chance. And the end of her "fixing" the wrong thinking of the men... well it didn't endear me to the male characters and I ended up falling out of love with Dameral. I also no longer felt like Venetia was true to her independent self. Maybe I'm too much a modern woman? I don't think that the case as I love Jane Austen. I think it is more like the story became out of hand in the end to get back to the couple. When she is rejected and goes to London, I am heart broken. How it comes back around, did not satisfy my thoughts of what this charming woman deserved. In addition to this, we are left wondering about the rest of the story. The other brother and the wife. It ends so abruptly that I, already not happy with the conclusion to the relationship, am not satisfied with the rest of it either. Such good characters and set up. Such good banter between the main characters as well as her banter with others. it just didn't end in the same manner.

I liked it, I didn't love it, and really, although parts were very good, the ending left it just good in the end.

AliCorbin reviewed Venetia by Georgette Heyer

Review of 'Venetia' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I'd picked it up solely for something to listen to until my hold came in, and the only reason I chose it was because it was short. I hadn't realized that it was a romance when I picked it out. I don't think I've read a romance since I was a teenager. Well, not a 20th-century romance anyway. But this one was a old-fashioned book, with Heyer working very hard to channel Jane Austen. It was an enjoyable read. But I don't think I'll dip back into the genre anytime soon.