‘Sev­en­teen year old Lady Alexan­dra is strong-willed and sharp-tongued — in a house full of older broth­ers and their friends, she had to learn to hold her own. Not the best mak­ings for an aris­to­cratic lady in Regency Lon­don. Yet her mother still dreams of mar­ry­ing Alex off to some­one safe, respectable, and wealthy. But between ball gown fit­tings, dances, and din­ner par­ties, Alex, along with her two best friends, Ella and Vivi, man­ages to get her­self into what may be her biggest scrape yet.

When the Earl of Black­moor is mys­te­ri­ously killed, Alex decides to help his son, the brood­ing and dev­il­ishly hand­some Gavin, uncover the truth. But will Alex’s heart be stolen in the process? In an adven­ture brim­ming with espi­onage, mur­der, and other clan­des­tine affairs, who could pos­si­bly have time to worry about find­ing a hus­band? Romance abounds as this year’s sea­son begins!’

Some­times a girl just wants to sit down with a cheesy period romance. The Sea­son is a pre­dictable read, but a fun one nonethe­less and I enjoyed the added ele­ment of a mur­der mys­tery in this regency romp.

Alex was your typ­i­cal sassy (and at times — spoilt) hero­ine, who dis­likes ball gowns and all the activ­i­ties a young lady of that time should enjoy — but who, once you put in said hated ball gown (I think she’s kid­ding her­self here — for a girl who pro­fesses to not care about such things — she spends an awful lot of the time think­ing and talk­ing about hair and gowns), trans­forms into the stun­ning beauty it was always obvi­ous she was — and well, you’ve seen it all before.

I liked Alex, Ella and Vi well enough — it was nice (if unre­al­is­tic), to read about not only one, but three, girls with their own tal­ents and desires beyond mar­riage and soci­ety — although Alex’s deter­mi­na­tion to stay unwed flies out the win­dow fairly quickly (as soon as she sees a cer­tain someone’s broad shoul­ders in a suit). At times I felt they were rude, naive and silly and more often than not it felt like three 21st cen­tury girls had just been plonked into regency lon­don, but it was nice to read about a hero­ine with a social life and sup­port group out­side the main love inter­est. As out-of-place as they were, I would have liked to have seen more of the three together (MacLean — can I tempt you to write a sequel or two, one each for Ella and Vi perhaps?).

Gavin was just as you’d expect — ridicu­lously hand­some, charm­ing, rich, and the two of them had the begin­nings of a teas­ing, flir­ta­tious ban­ter which, sadly, never quite got there. Rather than being a new mys­te­ri­ous stranger in Alex’s life (with the required rep­u­ta­tion of being a rake), Gavin is an old and close friend — a refresh­ing change in a YA romance. I would argue that more back­ground between the two main char­ac­ters was needed, to bet­ter estab­lish their rela­tion­ship. Gavin is also sup­pos­edly in mourn­ing for his father — though we don’t really see much of that either.

Did it make me roll my eyes? Well yes — more than once. Cliche? Cer­tainly. There was a rather pantomime-like vil­lain whose iden­tity was obvi­ous from the start, char­ac­ters who were all far too mod­ern and lib­eral to be believed, I’m still not quite sure how Alex man­aged to over­come the bad guy hold­ing a gun at the end and the romance was sweet, if a lit­tle lack­ing. For all that, The Sea­son is an enjoy­able period romance (per­son­ally — it’s far too chaste, though per­fect for a YA audi­ence). If you’re a fan of the genre and a younger reader then I would rec­om­mend you give it a go.

Rat­ing: 5/10