Friday's Child

by Georgette Heyer

Book Overview

"A lightsome, brightsome comedy." --Kirkus Reviews

"Nimble, light-hearted chronicle of high London society in the time of the Regency." --The New Yorker

Georgette Heyer's sparkling romances have charmed and delighted millions of readers. Her characters brilliantly illuminate one of the most exciting and fascinating eras of English history--when drawing rooms sparkled with well-dressed nobility...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1402210795
• ISBN13: 9781402210792
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Utterly delightful!

This was my first Georgette Heyer book and it was utterly delightful! It was a bit slow at first, and I was like “is there romance in this romance book or are they just gonna vibe with Sherry’s friends the whole time?” I still enjoyed the moments where they just vibed, but it wasn’t what I was looking for exactly. Fortunately, it picked up later in the book and I fell so in love with every character. George Wrotham was maybe my favorite. I’m excited to read more from Heyer! This was excellent!

Delightful Read

You will never be disappointed with a Georgette Heyer novel. The conversations between her characters are brilliant. You discover almost everything by how they address each other! She also has the most uniquely named people in her books. The way both characters in this book mature and evolve is wonderful. Sherry (Lord Sherington) calls Hero (his wife) "Kitten" and indeed he treats her like a pampered pet. But trouble brews for these newlyweds with gambling and other mischief afoot. Both main characters have a long way to go before becoming proper! The journey will keep you interested beginning to end with all the other characters just as interesting and amusing. Superb romance with substance.

gentle and fun favourite

I read my first "regency romance" from Ms. Heyer at the age of 13, and a few decades later still go back to my favourites. This story is definately one of them.For anyone who isn't already a fan of Georgette Heyer's largest group of books, this wonderful lady, writing in early and mid 20th-century England, produced a glorious collection of romances set in Regency England,(while all the time despising these best-selling books that took her away from the straight historical books she really wanted to write, but wrote more slowly.) (Oh yes, she also wrote some pretty good murder mysteries too, but this isn't one of them.)Her many fans are really pleased she did have these economic needs, because we find her romantic novels enjoyable again and again, and don't care about a few (paltry) flaws. Georgette Heyer's romances stand out from all others, to me anyway, because of the great sense of humour and wit that makes all of the books great fun, the easy to read style that never becomes banal, and plots which, although always happy-ending and sometimes rather similar, are never, ever, boring. If you like romances that are well-written, without taking themselves too seriously, and you're happy to know the right guy will always get the (sometimes wrong, but always feisty, and never insipid) heroine, try her books. You'll likely get hooked, and then be delighted to find there's plenty more (though not always in print). I probably call this book 'gentle' because the hero isn't apparently hateful, or offensive or caustic, just very likeable and somewhat thoughtless. There is one truly bad guy, whose inner wickedness is revealed gradually, and that anyone familiar with Heyer's books will pleasantly anticipate eventually getting his due, and there's an unpleasant (and very silly) mother-in-law, but this book has much less black/white stereotyping than some of Ms.Heyer's other books.What keeps me enjoying "Friday's Child" again and again is the broad range of characters included in the tale. With the hero's three friends, all very clearly different, playing their own parts in the twists and turns of the plot and general misunderstandings, plus various relatives contributing their own little cameos, there's plenty of variety in the story. After reading this book I always feel that I've met (or meet again) a nice assortment of different characters, none of them perfect, but most very likeable, with a few wonderfully unlikeable for contrast.Like all of Georgette Heyer's Regency stories you get a great (and well-researched) trip back into Society life during the Regency period, but this typically-Heyer gem gives you more. There's the wonderful range of characters you are shown, plus more enjoyment of the of the secondary personalities . In this picture of Regency England you learn more than the all-important niceties of "good ton" and "NOT good ton", you are introduced to some varied aspects of society. The nobility you meet include the honest and the phony, th

Fun jaunt with naive heroine learning London Ways

This is one of Heyer's longer books and it is packed full of wonderful characters as only Heyer can write them. The Heroine is the impetuous Sherry, who when rejected by the 'love' of his life Isabella, vows to marry the first woman he sees. This happens to be his young playmate, Hero Wantage. She is a bit younger than Sherry (who is already rather young himself) and both are rather naive about life in general.Sherry and Sherry's friends believe they can just carry with their lives as things were even though Sherry is married and Hero is quite happy for that to happen too - only as it turns out London is a lot bigger and a lot less easy for her to navigate in her usual good natured way. She gets fleeced by card sharps and has to be rescued from any number of scrapes by an increasingly worried and agitated and finally angry Sherry.What makes this such a good read is that the humour running through it - Hero is a great character, and Sherry's friends are also fun - but underneath it is a very good story about growing up - becoming responsible and facing up to your responsibilities. It also has a complex mix of characters who keep stumbling over one anotherand interfering with each other's plans - and Heyer does this so well.If you like Friday's Child you will probably also enjoy Cotillion and Convenient Marriage also by Heyer.

My Very Favorite Heyer!

This book's hero is quite different from the bored, sophisticated older man that Heyer usually casts in that role. Instead, "Sherry" is a gentleman in his early twenties who must marry to take control of his fortune from his unscrupulous uncle. When his current infatuation rejects his proposal, Sherry, miffed, finds a childhood friend in the village (Hero Wantage, "not quite seventeen") and marries her instead. Sherry's close friends all play a major role in the story and are admirably drawn, as are the hero and heroine. There are plenty of comic moments, the romance is quite believably developed, and I found myself laughing aloud more than once at the scrapes Hero keeps getting herself into. This is Ms. Heyer at her very best, and an excellent first-time pick for those Regency readers who wonder what all the fuss is about this grande dame of period romance.

Friday's Child is loving and giving

The opening scene of Sherry trying to propose to the Toast of London is a grabber, and the story goes charging off from there. Scorned and needing a wife to gain control of his finances, Sherry vows to marry the first woman he meets. That turns out to be Hero Wantage, the neglected poor relation of his neighbors who tagged after him as a child and still gives him devoted loyalty. She is thrilled to be a London lady, although she hasn't the least idea how to go about it. Although this looks like a romance, this is really the story of a young man learning to grow up. Sherry is essentially good-hearted but selfish; he doesn't want the responsibility of looking after a wife. This would be fine if he married a woman who was up to snuff, but his Kitten is decidely not. While Sherry's friends (a superb collection of supporting characters) look out for her as best they can, eventually it's time for Sherry to do the job himself. The finale, with various plot threads coming together with screwball abandon, is a triumph.