Review: The Season

Title: The Season
Author: Sarah MacLean
Published: 2009 by Scholastic
Obtained: Bought

Seventeen-year-old Lady Alexandra Stafford doesn’t fit into the world of Regency London – she’s strong-willed, sharp-tongued, and absolutely loathes dress fittings. Unfortunately, her mother has been waiting for years for Alex to be old enough to take part in the social whirlwind of a London season so she can be married off to someone safe, respectable, wealthy, and almost certainly boring. But Alex is far more fascinated by adventure than romance.

Somehow between ball gown fittings, dances, and dinner parties, Alex, along with her two best friends, Ella and Vivi, manages to get entangled in her biggest scrape yet. It’s a mystery brimming with espionage, murder, suspicion, and love.

This is a really fun, quick read. It’s not very long, it only took me two days of sporadic reading to finish it.

The strongest element of plot in this book is the romance and historical aspects. If you’re looking forward to a difficult and exciting mystery, look elsewhere. The mystery was really easy to figure out.

I absolutely adored the characters. MacLean can write some amazing personalities. Alex was smart and witty, and sometimes rash, unreasonable, and insecure. Completely a realistic character. Her friends, Vivi and Ella, were also wonderful. Vivi had tact and social grace, and Ella was the reader and writer. The front illustration is actually a really accurate picture of the three of them. Gavin was also rather amazing. He had his faults, but he and Alex had a good relationship.

I think that Sarah MacLean should write two more books, centering on each of the other girls. I really liked them, and they didn’t get to end up with anyone!

Overall: cute, predictable, romantic, and funny. A good summer read.

Rating: 8/10

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Content Warnings: Kissing, maybe one mild swear word.