So I guessed who Mr Brown was on page 2. Was I supposed to? Was it supposed to remain a mystery? “Mr Brown” is the mysterious benefactor of orphan Victoria (then 14, but 18 when the book starts). It’s a similar theme to Daddy Long Legs. Victoria finishes school, paid for by Mr Brown, and […]

A young girl lies about her age to get a job as secretary in a guest house somewhere in Ireland, and falls in love with the owner and proprietor. Judy is 20, Raff is 35, and the other woman is the glamorous Marcia. Cloud Castle isn’t the most satisfying of Seale’s novels. There are several […]

The English Tutor is an interesting example of a “vintage” student-teacher romance. Irish tearaway Clancy is seventeen and her English (nationality) tutor, Mark Cromwell, is thirty-seven. Though “romance” is perhaps stretching it because – given the era and the imprint – there’s minimal romantic tension and zero sexual tension. In many ways it’s much more […]

The Gentle Prisoner is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which the characters themselves are well aware of and constantly refer to. Selfish wastrel father Lucius effectively “sells” his teenage daughter off to a man more than twice her age, who lives in a huge house, collects things, and is a bitter recluse due […]

I don’t understand why this book is titled The Silver Sty. Where/what is the sty? According to the dictionary, a “sty” is a pen or enclosure for swine, or a messy, dirty or debauched place. Unless I skimmed over some reference, I don’t get the relevance here. Anyway, onto our protagonists. Sarah Silver is seventeen […]

Gael is one of the most appealing and also credible of Sara Seale’s heroines. She’s only eighteen but a genuine “old soul”. There’s the usual unpalatable Seale guff to present her as even younger than that – the endless references to her child like form, and her being a “thin little girl”. But she knows […]

Why must Sara Seale insist on making so many of her heroines plain? And in the case of poor Sarah, constantly harping on about her plainness through the mouth of every character including the hero. Honestly, one starts to wonder if she is somehow deformed. Even in the final few pages of romantic denouement, there’s […]

This is the most moving of the Sara Seale novels I  have read so far. There’s a bereavement in it, and it is very poignantly and movingly described. The heroine is 18-year-old Morgan, who really suffers and struggles in this book. The hero is 36-year-old Carey Lord, who’s actually really nice – if insufferably stupid […]

What I love about Sara Seale is the unashamed absurdity of her plots. Here, we have a man in his mid-thirties, who due to an injury, bitterness and heartbreak (if he has a heart – it’s never apparent) decides to go to an orphanage and pick out a girl to marry. He then chooses the […]