Book #29: An Accomplished Woman by Jude Morgan

After reading A Little Folly by Morgan, I wanted to check out some more of his other books. After reading the synopses on Goodreads, I decided on An Accomplished Woman because it sounded interesting. But sadly, I didn't like it as much as I liked A Little Folly. The book follows Lydia Templeton, an intellectual and single 30-year-old who is happy in her life, after she turned down the most eligible suitor in her early twenties. But she accepts the role of chaperone or companion to a younger and much more naive girl going to Bath for the season, to advise her in her relationship issues, and all sorts of romantic entanglements ensue.

I liked Lydia's character, particularly her inner thoughts that we are privy to in the narration. But I thought her insistence on being direct and sarcastic got to be a little annoying--particularly with Lewis Durrant (the ex-suitor of hers who is still around since he is her family's next-door neighbor). She is downright rude to him and he doesn't care, which seems ridiculous. She is half Elinor from Sense and Sensibility, with the insistence on being 100% rational all the time, and half Emma, trying to matchmake and decide everyone else's love lives, while insisting that she isn't actually involved. The storyline of the book, and half of the characters, are seemingly half lifted from Emma, which bothers me, since it wasn't like Morgan set out to write a rewrite of Emma but just copied and hoped that nobody would notice. I was really annoyed by the coincidences by the end. Also, the book seemed to move pretty slowly and it took me forever to get through. That was probably partly because I was reading it most of the time while I was nursing and not solely focusing on reading, but I feel like a good bit of the story could have been condensed. However, it was still pretty enjoyable and I was happy with how it all ended up romantically at the end (although it seems a little unbelievable that Mr. Durrant was really waiting around for her all that time, when she was so mean and he was so prideful (according to her)).