I actually read this in a bind-up with another of her novels, Bride to Be, but I needed to review them separately because this one pushed so many rage buttons and I didn't want to drag the other book down with it. Brief overview: Anabel is a widow with three children who is experiencing her first Season in London. She meets and falls for the charming Charles Norbury. Her young cousin Georgina is also in town enjoying her first Season. Anabel's best friend and neighbor from back home, Christopher Hanford, comes down to London for...reasons?Anabel has two suitors, Georgina develops a little crush on Hanford, and the kids are bored and smart and get up to mischief. There was a great set-up for some light-hearted fun or even some over-the-top melodrama. Instead, it was just a bunch of fail with a few bright spots.

Let's start off with the fat-shaming. It was bad. Really, really bad. Like so bad that I almost stopped reading, but I kept on because I liked (and felt sorry for) Georgina. The fat-shaming of this poor girl by Anabel's mother was relentless and cruel and even Anabel, who thinks she's being supportive, engages in the kind of casual insults that anyone who has ever struggled with their weight will recognize. And Georgina was portrayed as the type of girl who keeps chocolates in her pockets and hovers by the buffet table at her first ball. The only person who treats her with any respect is Hanford, so she naturally develops feelings for him. And this, of course, is the impetus she needs to begin losing weight. And how does she go about losing weight? BY REFUSING TO EAT. Wait. What? The only solution to being overweight is to flirt with anorexia? I just... NO. So much no.

And, then, there was Anabel. She repeatedly talks about how important her children are to her, but she's running around London with Norbury and completely ignoring them. And when Norbury treats them poorly, she doesn't notice. I'm not a parent myself, but this kind of neglectful parenting in fiction bugs the crap out of me, especially when the children are written with such care and are portrayed as intelligent enough to recognize that they're being neglected and to come up with a plan, misguided though it may be, to fix that. Anabel behaves throughout this novel like the terrible first wife of the damaged, brooding hero of a much better novel.

I wanted Georgina and Christopher to end up together and ride off into the sunset with Anabel's children to go make a happy family in the countryside. Alas, it was not to be.

And, yes, I realize that this book was published in 1984 and what was acceptable then may not be now, but the book was re-published in 2016 and there's no reason--no reason at all--that the author could not have re-written this book to bring it up-to-date and fix some of these problematic issues. DO NOT READ. ( )