Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In this sterling collection of Regency-set stories, it looks just like a tarnished old sixpence, but for four friends, who first meet at Madame Rochambeaux's School for Gentle Girls, it could prove to be a talisman for finding true love. In Stefanie Sloan's Something New, Anne Brabourne needs to find a biddable husband ASAP, which means she will take any help she can from the coin or even the rakish duke of Dorset. Cordelia Padley, in Elizabeth Boyle's Something Borrowed, fashions her fiancé out of thin air, but now she needs to borrow someone like Kipp Talcott to temporarily play the part. In Laura Lee Guhrke's Something Blue, Lawrence Blackthorne tries to thwart Elinor Daventry's plans to marry Lord Bluestone by stealing the sixpence from her. Julia Quinn's heroine Beatrice Heywood's scientific nature has her scoffing at the powers of the sixpence since it seems determined to pair her up with Frederick Grey-Osbourne in A Sixpence in Her Shoe. Each love story in this superbly crafted anthology is expertly imbued with the distinctive literary DNA of its creator, and the end result is a wonderfully witty, sweep-you-off-your-feet romantic experience for long-time fans as well as readers new to these marvelously gifted writers.--Charles, John Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
When four boarding school roommates find an old sixpence hidden in one of their mattresses, they make a pact that each will use it in turn as a lucky charm to find true love and the perfect husband. As adults, they know this was all in fun-until it begins to work! Quinn's brief prolog, "Something Old," beautifully sets the stage for the four novellas that follow. A young woman who must wed before she turns 21 accepts the aid of a rakehell duke in finding a worthy husband and winds up with the duke instead in Stefanie Sloane's "Something New"; a desperate young woman begs her childhood friend to pretend temporarily to be her fiancé in order to stop her meddling aunts' matchmaking attempts in Elizabeth Boyle's "Something Borrowed"; a government investigation and the theft of the sixpence cause problems for the disillusioned heroine in Laura Lee Guhrke's "Something Blue"; and a science-oriented heroine who's never believed in the coin's power learns otherwise when she connects with an especially intriguing physics scholar in Quinn's ".and a Sixpence in Her Shoe." VERDICT A clever premise, inventive situations, and witty repartee make this sexy anthology the perfect romantic read for those cold midwinter nights. Favorite historical authors Quinn, Sloane, Boyle, and Guhrke all live in the Pacific Northwest. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
