Rating: 
Summary: So, so good. Regnecies at their best.
Review: My college roommate introduced me to Goergette Heyer in the last semester of my senior year. . .and somehow I managed to graduate anyway. That was 30 years ago and I collected all her Regencies in paperback and reread them all every few years. Cotillion is my favorite of many favorites. I still remember when I got to the point I was rooting for Freddy. . .and feeling guilty about it becasue he was NOT the proper hero of a Regency book. Georgette is great. Now I have a fourteen year old daughter to whom I am introducing these most witty and well written of books. . . and I find my collection is musty smelling and the bindings decaying. So, so I can share them with my granddaughters (the ones I hope to have years from now), I will be building my collection of Georgettes in hardback as I can. . .Thank you, Amazon.com., for making that a possiblity for me.
Rating:
Summary: High Comedy
Review: Not only is this story light and frothy, it is also full of well written, funny characters. Kitty Charing is told by her step father, Mr.Pennicuik, to choose a husband from his great nephews as a condition of her inheritance of his large fortune. As she had always been kept under his close supervision, she is determined to spend some time in London, trying her wings in Society before committing to a marriage and so forces Freddy, the most affable of the nephews to take her to stay with his married sister. It's a witty,funny story with a lot of charm and good humour.
Rating:
Summary: Charming AND Funny
Review: Not only is this story light and frothy, it is also full of well written, funny characters. Kitty Charing is told by her step father, Mr.Pennicuik, to choose a husband from his great nephews as a condition of her inheritance of his large fortune. As she had always been kept under his close supervision, she is determined to spend some time in London, trying her wings in Society before committing to a marriage and so forces Freddy, the most affable of the nephews to take her to stay with his married sister. It's a witty,funny story with a lot of charm and good humour.
Rating:
Summary: Freddy has....address.
Review: The best thing about Heyer is that, as the inventer of the genre, she didn't have a formula; you never know who you're going to find as the hero/heroine of her novels. Freddy is probably her most unusual and most lovable. Freddy grows on the reader like moss, and you don't really notice 'til you're lost. As Kitty so insightfully notes, in their post Napoleanic world, he is exactly the kind of hero a woman of her station needs. OK, she doesn't say it quite like that, but the point remains that light-minded Freddy is ideal for the regency world she inhabits.
The humor in this novel is priceless and, unlike all the imitators, most of it is at the hero's expense. I'd take a ride around London with Freddy any time.
Rating:
Summary: The Reason Heyer is the Queen of Regency Romance
Review: The good news--Georgette Heyer is the standard by which all writers of Regency Romance are judged. The bad news--after reading any of Ms. Heyer's books, one becomes a true stickler for detail when it comes to other writers in this genre.Like most of her novels, 'Cotillion' is a witty and elegant romp through the world of the beau monde--its foibles and its fashions. Kitty Charing in her own right is as assertive as any modern heroine as she learns to navigate the convoluted social waters of London. Unlike those around her, she sees the good in everyone, which of course lead to some comic mishaps. Her pretend 'fiance' Freddy is wonderful as the not-quite-as-brain-dead-as-everyone-thinks-him man about town. Like all of Ms. Heyer's novels, it does help to be rather familiar with regency cant, and there are actually fan sites out there with glossaries of regency slang used in her books.
Rating:
Summary: The Reason Heyer is the Queen of Regency Romance
Review: The good news--Georgette Heyer is the standard by which all writers of Regency Romance are judged. The bad news--after reading any of Ms. Heyer's books, one becomes a true stickler for detail when it comes to other writers in this genre. Like most of her novels, 'Cotillion' is a witty and elegant romp through the world of the beau monde--its foibles and its fashions. Kitty Charing in her own right is as assertive as any modern heroine as she learns to navigate the convoluted social waters of London. Unlike those around her, she sees the good in everyone, which of course lead to some comic mishaps. Her pretend 'fiance' Freddy is wonderful as the not-quite-as-brain-dead-as-everyone-thinks-him man about town. Like all of Ms. Heyer's novels, it does help to be rather familiar with regency cant, and there are actually fan sites out there with glossaries of regency slang used in her books.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great Regency Romances.
Review: This book has been described as one of the greatest Regency romances of all time. It subtly and with cracking good humour subverts all the expectations of the genre with a great deal more subtlety, humour and cunning than most deliberate parodies. Heyer builds up her usual cast of powerful and memorable characters - no two-dimensional characters for her! She gives us a vain and slightly selfish, yet also totally generous and completely charming heroine, who you cannot dislike; a delightful, stammering and ineffectual dandy who turns out to have gumption beneath his affectations, his lovely, silly sister with no fashion sense, but a great deal of kindness, a wicked rake who yet fascinates and interests us - a cast literally of dozens of characters, all of whom are distinctively portrayed. There are no less than four romantic plots in this book, interthreaded and interwoven out of each other with exquisite grace - (hence the title - "Cotillion" - basically a gay little dance). In less skilled hands this book would have become heavy-handed and ponderous, exquisitely tactless. In Heyer's hands the book is light and flowing, fluently written, complicated and yet not at all hard to follow. It is a book for the fan of Heyer, and is best read after you have cultivated a familarity with Heyer's traditional Regencies - for example, Regency Buck. She subtly and wickedly subverts traditions she herself established. You'll laugh, you'll cry, your emotions will all be twanged one by one. It is a very fine book. A very fine book indeed. I won't tell you who the hero is, because it would ruin the book for you - but you won't be disappointed. Cotillion is a happy book, written by Heyer at the very height of her powers. It is not just a Regency Romance. It is a novel about history - Heyer's Regency novels have, collectively, been described as the most important set of books about the Regency middle and upper class lifestyle ever to be written. It is a novel about real people. It is also a novel about the Regency Romance. And it is also a seriously comic novel. Read it. Preferably after you have read several others of her Regency Romances (I recommend Regency Buck, Sylvester, Faro's Daughter, and The Corinthian as the best examples of Heyer's traditional Regency - that she subtly teased in this book), so you have the right expectations.
Rating:
Summary: A witty and delightful novel.
Review: This is another one of Georgette Heyer's triumphs. The hero Freddy is exquisitely and endearingly funny and is a perfect match for Kitty. As usual, there is a lot of crisp dialogue with intelligent humour,coupled with the gallery of secondary characters, the funniest being Kitty's eccentric uncle. If you still haven't read this book, then do it NOW; you don't know what you are missing!
Rating:
Summary: High Comedy
Review: This is quite possibly my favorite Heyer, which is saying something, because the competition is fierce. The author plays with the usual ingredients of her books, and reverses them (the man who appears to be the hero is actually the villian.) Everybody is slightly absurd, including the heroine. In books by numberless imitators of Ms. Heyer, the heroine is always perfect. Not here. Kitty Charing is bright and good-natured. She is also very innocent, very impulsive, a crusader, a match-maker, and the despair of her putative fiancee, Freddy Standen. Freddy himself is one of Ms. Heyer's happiest creations. The plot is tightly wound, and fits together with satisfying clicks. Great scenes: Dophinton's proposal to Kitty; Freddy's ditto; Kitty meets Freddy's family; Freddy and Kitty go sight-seeing in London; Freddy discusses the Elgin Marbles with his father; Freddy discovers why Kitty is seeing Dolphinton; Kitty and Olivia encounter Olivia elderly admirer; the masquerade; the elopement; and Jack's comeuppance at the hands of Freddy. If you have never read this book, prepare for a treat.
Rating: 
Summary: you'll be won over
Review: This is the first Heyer book I've read--some bookstore clerks insisted I had to try it. In many ways, the book seemed like fake Jane Austen to me, but it was written with so much humor and good will that I ended up really enjoying it. The opening scene is rather tedious, but it's clear sailing once heroine Kitty Charing makes her appearance. Heyer excels at creating memorable and unusual characters, and enjoys playing with her readers' expectations.
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