Whenever I’m asked to list my favorite couples from my lifetime of reading, one of the pairs I always include is Jennie and Alick from Elisabeth Ogilivie’s Jennie trilogy (Jennie About to Be, The World of Jennie G., and Jennie Glenroy). And in all the years I’ve listed them, I’ve yet to encounter anyone who’s so much as heard of them, let alone another fan to gush with over what a lovely story it is and how dreamy a hero Alick is.
The trilogy is historical fiction rather than romance, but reading the first two books as an impressionable young teen fed my later love of romance–and even some of the settings and story types I gravitate toward. The first book opens in London in 1808 with the orphaned heroine seeking a good marriage under her aunt’s chaperonage, so I’m pretty sure it’s the first Regency I ever read. But the setting quickly moves to the Scottish Highlands and eventually to America (the coast of Maine, to be specific). There’s history and action and angst, a richly developed community of characters, and did I mention the poignant cross-class central love story and how much impressionable teen me wanted my very own Alick?
So I’m trying one more time! Has anyone else read this series? Anyone? Anyone? And do you love a book or series no one else has ever heard of that you’d like to recommend?
Also, a quick word of self-promotion. My second published novel, A Marriage of Inconvenience, is on sale for $1.99 exclusively at iBooks through the end of the month.
Thanks for sharing this, Susanna. Not that I need more books on my TBR pile but this series sounds excellent.
I don’t have any favorites that *no one* has heard of. I do have some favorite authors I think deserve to be better known than they are. For instance, I loved Jean Ross Ewing/Julia Ross’s books and wish there were more of them.
I keep meaning to try those, Elena!
Jude Morgan’s Regencies, the best of which is Indiscretion, but then I’m always yapping on about him, Villette by Charlotte Bronte (ditto), Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild (ditto), and … and … I feel an entire post coming on.
I have Bury the Chains on my Kindle but haven’t yet read it. I should definitely get to that one soon.
I’ve read them. Remember liking them very much indeed. Thanks for reminding me…perhaps time to return to them. Lovely books.
Yay! So glad someone else knows and enjoys these books.