Bewitching Season

Bewitching Season, by Marissa Doyle (2008) is the sort of book I would imagine Georgette Heyer thinking up if she had wanted to add Magic to her trademark regency/early 19th century) romances. Like many a Heyer romance, Bewitching Season features a smart heroine and a handsome and sympathetic male lead, and the setting is the London Season, when young girls of good families came out into society.

Persephone and and her twin sister Penelope are about to begin their season. Pen, the more vivacious of the girls, is eager; Persy, the more studious, feels sick to her stomach. She would far rather continue at home with their governess, learning not just the elements of a classical education, but magic as well.

For unlike the other young ladies, these twins come from a line of female magic users. And Persy will have to use both her magic and brains, and considerable help from her little brother this coming season, when her governess becomes ensnared in a plot to wrest power from the young not-yet-queen Victoria....Unfortunately for Persy, magic and brains are not much use in sorting out the tangles of young love, as she learns when her path keeps crossing that of handsome young Lochinvar.

In short, a pleasant read.

Poor Pen, who gets nothing to do in this book, is apparently going to have a much more interesting time in the sequel, Betraying Season, is coming May 2009.

Here's a rave review at The Book Muncher, and another review at Everyone has a Blue Castle.

And for more nineteenth-century fun, visit Marissa Doyle's blog, Nineteen Teen.

Bewitching Season has been nominated for the Cybils Awards in the Science Fiction/Fantasy Catagory--the complete list is here.