Breakaway Books

Authored by Megan Walker; Published 2020; Romance

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

Lakeshire Park is unabashedly predictable. If you’ve read Pride and Prejudice, you know how this story will unfold within the first few chapters. But, it’s a regency romance—isn’t that kind of what you signed up for?

Amelia and her sister Clara are on the edge of poverty as their stepfather inches closer to death, leaving them no inheritance. After only one season in London, they are invited to a two-week visit to the eponymous Lakeshire Park as a last gambit to secure a match and security for them both. But Clara must compete with another young lady for the bachelor’s affection, and Amelia takes it as her mission to ensure Clara gets a fair shot.

There were two elements in this novel that I greatly enjoyed: the loyalty that Amelia shows to her sister, time and time again, and the discussion around arranged marriage. Amelia’s loyalty is perhaps her most distinguishing quality, and it seems that she is willing to sacrifice almost anything in order to provide for her sister’s happiness. Granted, at times it can border on overprotection, but I couldn’t help but enjoy the emphasis on this sisterly relationship even in a romance.

There are moments of true discussion in the novel: is love enough for marriage? Must there not be other considerations? While love may win out in the end of regency romances, I felt like the author gave a somewhat more realistic treatment of the factors that make up the happiness of a marriage besides the romance of it all. But perhaps I am being overly optimistic.

Apart from that are all the joyful characteristics of period romances that I can’t help but delight in—the horseback rides through scenic countrysides, the flirtatious parlor games, the ball where all the drama happens. The scandal that would barely rate a glance today! Lakeshire Park had it all.

If you want to escape to a simpler, kinder time, pick this one up.