I am disappointingly ambivalent about Daisy Goodwin's The Fortune Hunter.
Charlotte Baird is soon to be the richest woman in England - once she reaches her majority and inherits the Lennox fortune, that is. And so, as might be expected in Downton Abbey-era England, Charlotte has no shortage of suitors, even once they discover her quirks, such as a love of photography and disdain for fashion. Unfortunately, she's falling in love with Bay Middleton, a cavalry captain deemed utterly unsuitable by her older brother (and guardian) Frank, and his insufferable fiancee, Lady Augusta Crewe. Bay, however, has been drafted to pilot the Empress of Austria around England for the hunt season, and with each hunt seems to fall further under her spell.
All of the characters are real people: some, such as the Empress, achieved lasting fame (and infamy) in their lives. Others, like Bay Middleton "the hardest rider in England" have fallen into obscurity, before Goodwin plucked them out and brought them back to life. Her writing is rich, and the research painstaking. She transports her readers into the era and events depicted on the page, without anything feeling forced. I simply had a difficult time caring too much what happened to the characters, perhaps because they are real and Lady Mountbatten and the Countess of Carnarvon have provided a glimpse of what their lives actually looked like.
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