Reputation

Croucher’s fiction debut (after self-help guide You’re Crushing It) half-heartedly parodies the Regency romance genre with a tedious dark comedy centered on voracious reader Georgiana Ellers. After middle-class 20-something Georgiana’s absentee parents entrust her to the care of her maternal aunt, Mrs. Burton, a bored and lonely Georgiana seizes her chance to socialize when she meets the notorious, upper-class Frances Campbell at a party. She’s quickly sucked into Frances’s circle of substance-abusing friends and is desperate to keep up. Happy to be accepted and enjoying her flirtation with handsome Thomas Hawksley, Georgiana turns a blind eye to the dangers of her new lifestyle, even after rakish Jeremiah Russell manipulates Frances into having sex with him, and another of Georgiana’s new friends, Cecily Dugray, suffers alcohol poisoning at a party. Georgiana’s obliviousness is not her only alienating quality; she also proves judgmental, rude, and easily led astray, and what little character development there is comes too little too late as Georgiana realizes the error of her ways and attempts to make last-minute amends. The casual diversity of the cast is nice, but all the usual fun trappings of Regency romance are absent here, swapped out for mean spirited humor and darkness. This misses the mark. (Apr.)