April's Lady: A Novel

Joyce has attracted the attention of two very different men in the social season's glittering maze. There is Mr. Dysart: steady, honorable, and genuinely good, the sort of man a sensible woman ought to want. Then there is Mr. Beauclerk: charming, witty, and possessing that dangerous quality of seeming to know secrets the other guests would rather keep. Joyce herself remains a delightfully shrewd observer of the game being played around her, her own heart a locked chamber she guards with wit and wariness. As the season reaches its crescendo, she must determine which man's devotion is real and which is merely performance, before she commits to a lifetime of either contentment or regret. Hungerford writes with a light, assured touch, letting her heroine's intelligence rather than her beauty drive the narrative. The result is a romance that understands attraction often lives in the spaces between what is said and what is meant.