Review: Someone Perfect

Someone Perfect by Mary Balogh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Lady Estelle Lamarr and her twin brother have reached the ripe age of twenty-six without either falling in love or getting engaged, let alone married. When discussing her requisites for a husband, her brother concludes that Estelle wants the Someone Perfect of the title.

Their nearest aristocratic neighbour is Maria Wiley, just twenty years old, she nursed her sick mother until her death and has since lived very quietly with her former governess turned companion. Her half-brother Justin, now the Earl of Brandon, was banished from his home by his father when he was just twenty-two years old with just the clothes on his back and what he could carry. He spent the intervening years until his father's death six yeas ago working for a living - rumours abound as to what he was doing then with many speculating that he was in prison for unknown crimes. When Justin inherited the title he sent Maria and her mother away from the ancestral home Everleigh Park. But he has now realised that with his step-mother's death he is responsible for Maria and has come to bring her home. Unfortunately, having left home when Maria was very small, and having evicted her and her mother from Everleigh Park after his father's death, Maria loathes Justin and doesn't want to leave her new home.

Justin and Estelle's first meeting is not auspicious: she is paddling in the river, exposing her legs, with her hair unbound and he seems frightening with his scowl, sitting on his horse with his scary dog. Despite their differences, Justin enlists Estelle and her brother to accompany Maria to Everleigh Park, at least for the first week or two, to help her adjust and meet her relatives on both sides who were estranged from Maria's mother during her lifetime.

With a large family gathering, secrets are revealed - but can Justin persuade Estelle that she is his perfect Countess?

I enjoyed this, as always Mary Balogh tells a charming tale. However, as others have also commented, this is the tenth Westcott book and it does feel like every single one of the nine previous couples, plus their children and siblings gets a mention in this book which creates pages and pages of names and events which are entirely superfluous to the story. My preference would be to only bring one other couple into any story to stop the plot getting bogged down in backstory.

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