The Grand Sophy has arrived

Though I have been meaning to read her works for a while, The Grand Sophy is my first time reading Georgette Heyer and it certainly won’t be my last. After browsing several reviews and blurbs, I finally settled on The Grand Sophy from Heyer’s many novels and was not disappointed.

When Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy prepares to journey to Brazil, he leaves his darling Sophy in the care of her aunt, Lady Ombersley, but little do the Ombersleys know that the “Grand Sophy” will soon turn their quiet home life upside down! Unapologetically wilful and intrepid, Sophy arrives in a house turned dismal by debt and ill-chosen matches. Sophy’s eldest cousins, Cecilia and Charles have made up their minds to marry persons who are all wrong for them, as Sophy soon discovers. There is nothing else for it, it is up to Sophy to make things right and restore her family’s former happiness.

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Reading Georgette Heyer’s Regency romance is often said to be the next best thing to reading Jane Austen and I can now see why. Sophy is definitely a young lady who would be right at home among the Bennet sisters, her humor and candid nature making her fit fight in with Austen’s heroines. I loved Sophy’s personality and her seeming naiveté; she comes across as entirely unassuming but somehow manages to make everyone do exactly what she wills. Her rollicking, yet carefully planned [mis]adventures with her cousin Charles and Lord Charlbury are some of the funniest moments in the novel, and the ending is sweet and fitting.