Lady Helen Finds Her Song

The British Raj is the setting for this pleasantly mild Regency romance. Lady Helen, shy and overlooked by her family in England, accompanies her mother and new stepfather to his military assignment in India. Helen never fit in at home, but upon arrival in Calcutta she makes friends with kindhearted Capt. Michael Rhodes and handsome officer Arthur Bancroft. Arthur seems to embody all of Helen’s romantic ideals; she doesn’t realize that with Michael, she can be herself. In turn, Michael is captivated by her beauty and compassion but feels unworthy of her due to having lost a leg in battle. A crisis forces Helen to recognize her true feelings for both men, but it feels as if her problems and the threats to the community are resolved too easily. Purists may object to careless historical errors such as Helen traveling without a female chaperone to visit an Indian ruler, but Moore (Simply Anna) offsets these flaws with vivid descriptions of India and its inhabitants that add an appealing dimension to her storytelling. (July)