The Wary Widow

by Barbara Hazard

Book Overview

A widowed countess encounters a devious man from her past-and the only one who can save her is the one man she thought she couldn't trust...."Barbara Hazard always delivers the best!"-Joan Wolf This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451201310
• ISBN13: 9780451201317
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Berkley
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.0" x 0.8" x 4.5"

Customer Reviews

An unusual book --

As a Regency Romance, this is not exactly a fun read. However, as a Gothic novel, it succeeds quite well, having all the necessary ingredients. There are the heroine's first-person voice throughout; repeated strong hints of something nasty in the background and the reappearance of the truly nasty villain; an abundance of secrets that are not at all the usual trivial gossip-fodder; a likeable ingenue, along with a host of other wonderfully-realized secondary characters, and last but not least, a marvelous, dashing hero.With no help from her family, Cornelia survived her childhood trauma and is now the widowed Countess of Wyckend. She has been asked to convey her thirteen-year-old niece, Lili, from the convent in France, where she has been raised, back to England. In the company of Cornelia's cousin, Alastair, they journey to Vienna, to enjoy, and participate in, the celebrations attendant on the Congress of Vienna. During this social whirl, Cornelia becomes aware of her love for Alastair, and his for her, but she is convinced that nothing can come of it. Happily, she is proven wrong by the end of the book.The villain is duly dispatched, but not before some truly gruesome conversations regarding this eventual happening. If 'all's well that ends well' then perhaps all that goes before may be worth the happy ending. But not without a struggle on the part of the reader, as layer after layer of the dark underbelly of society is laid bare. Not your usual romance story this, but one that is certainly well-written, and peopled with unforgettable characters, to be sure.

Classic Regency

Barabara Hazard is a consistently good Regency writer. In the Wary Widow she recycles one of her earlier books minor characters to be the hero. The book takes us through parts of France after the war, onto Vienna and then back to England. There is a truly black villain, minor villains, and a wonderful character in Mrs. Potter who comes to their rescue. Both Alastair's and Cornelia's characters and their relationship are developed over the length of the book, and Lili, the girl who is to be rescued, is a delight, showing her own strength of character from time to time.From the back of the Signet paperback edition...The charms of Vienna are certainly not lost on Cornelia, the widowed Countess of Wyckend. But she has come to this beautiful city with a very important responsibility-she must look after a young relative whom she and her distant cousin, Alastair Russell, recently rescued from a French convent.Cornelia knows from experience that selfish, frivolous rogues like Alastair are simply not to be trusted. But while trying to shield her innocent young charge from the attentions of unscrupulous suitors, Cornelia encounters a devious man from her own past-and finds that Alastair may be the only one who can save her....