I love a good regency romp, especially when our h/h are actually smart and funny. Our heroine, the local spinster with a good heart and passion lurking inside her drab clothes, meets up with our hero, the EArl of Stanhope, Tris, and he is indeed everything a maiden (or not a maiden...) could ever wish for. The issue for me in this book started on page 87 when Tris's silly cousin, Ossie, the very one who is the reason Tris came to this backwater in the first place, pronounces that Tris is engaged to his mistress!!!! It was Ossie's way of trying to get out of a iffy situation and this was just idiotic. There was no way a man as dashing and polite as our handsome Tris would allow anyone for one second to think he was going to marry his mistress. As a regency reader, we all know that was simply not done, bad ton and all that. Tris would never have allowed the wiff of such a scandal to smear him. No way and this ruins the story. The push and pull of Calista (our spinster whose Vicar brother is trying to force her to marry a horse mad smelly neighbor) and Tris was too crazy. Too many situations, too many people, made for silly conflicts and plots that really were illogical. I like my regencies original and funny but this was too much!!!!!

This is a fun read, no doubt. Lord Stanhope whisks away to the country to defend the honor of an "old spinster" whom he has never met. He finds that this woman is hardly so old and unattractive as she has been described, and Stanhope finds himself falling in love. Hijinks ensue.

All that said, I've found Ms. Benson's other works to be far more entertaining. This is good, but be sure to not overlook her other books!

I found this book very corny and boring. I had a hard time reading it.

Although the cast of characters will be familiar to Regency-era romance readers, Benson makes them her own with her sparkling dialogue and telltale details. It's a terrific book, and for a debut, it's spectacular. My only reason for giving it less than 5 stars is that I prefer my romances to have a strong emotional thread in them (other than humor). If you want to be touched by the book rather than just having your funny bone tickled, you'll be disappointed. But if you're looking for a good time, this book is, in a word, fun.

This book is what people are talking about when they say "a Regency romp!" Jessica Benson has penned an *amazingly* good first novel with "Lord Stanhope's Proposal". The writing is excellent, the characters delightful and the plot an intricately woven comedy of manners (and errors!) The book reads like a cross between Georgette Heyer and Julia Quinn--and I mean that as high praise!

The heroine of the story, Miss Calista Ashton, is a 24 year old spinster and blue-stocking with a sharp wit, good heart and terrible clothes sense. She is the sister of a brandy-swilling vicar in a small village. When the Hon. Oswald Cravanndish (Ossie) is ordered by his formidable mother to rusticate and find a suitable bride (following an ignominious dive into Sally Jersey's punchbowl), he and his equally frivolous friends, Nev and Squibby, cook up a plan to travel to their friend, Elmo Lyttworth's, village and pretend to court the village spinster (Calista). Unfortunately, this plan is accompanied by bets being placed in the books at their club regarding the odds of Ossie's courtship meeting with success. Recognizing that his foolish cousin has endangered the reputation of an innocent lady, Tristan Rutherford-Hayes, Lord Stanhope, travels to the village as well in an attempt to defuse the situation and rescue the lady's reputation. And that is only the beginning of an extremely complicated and amusing plot....

Tristan, the Earl of Stanhope, is a marvelous hero--jaw-droppingly handsome, fabulously wealthy, intelligent, charming, honorable and sexy. Bored with his string of vacuous mistresses and empty-headed society debutantes, he is challenged by Calista's wit and charmed by her lack of artifice. Calista, for her part, cannot believe that such a gorgeous paragon would really be interested in her. But the two are seldom left to ponder their blossoming love in peace, as alternative suitors and interfering chaperones pop in and out of the story at a delicious pace.

The story does follow the plot of Georgette Heyer's "The Nonesuch" in general terms--a Corinthian, a paragon of society, and a confirmed bachelor, visits a small provincial village (that goes ga-ga over having such an august presence in their midst!) and ends up falling in love with the local spinster. Tristan is even referred to as "the Nonesuch" in this story and some of the dialogue is pure Heyer. To my mind, Jessica Benson has *improved* on the story since I always have thought that the hero and heroine in "The Nonesuch" were rather bland and uninteresting (and Tristan and Calista are definitely not that!) The secondary characters in "Lord Stanhope's Proposal" are also wonderfully well-drawn (although there is no one character to equal the pure brilliance of "The Nonesuch"'s beautiful, self-absorbed schemer, Tiffany Wield!)

In summary, this is a charming, delightful romance that lovers of the Regency sub-genre should *adore*.

Highly recommended!