False Colours

Heyer, Georgette. (2008 reprint). False Colours. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks.

ISBN: 9781402210754          

Pages: 341

Genre: Regency Romance, historical fiction

Annotation: Christopher Fancot pretends to be his twin to avert scandal.

Summary: The Honorable Christopher Fancot has a strong bond with his twin brother Evelyn: each knows when something bad happens to the other. When he gets a feeling something bad has happened to Evelyn he rushes home. He finds his twin missing. His mother pressures him into pretending to be his brother at a dinner with a potential fiancée.  Things become even more complicated when ‘his’ potential fiancée and some other guests visit him at the Fancot country home at Ravenhurst. Christopher finds himself falling in love with his brother’s fiancée and she with him. Even if Evelyn turns up the problems have just begun.

Evaluation: good read

Heyer’s characters are excellent: they are witty and have flaws which cause more humor but also make them endearing. Christopher Fancot is worried for his twin, and smart enough to ‘be’ him, but also would cheerfully cause his twin bodily harm if Evelyn arrives. The fiancée in question, Cressy Stavely, has an intelligent mind which makes her witty. She also is self-aware enough to know she is annoyed with the young step-mother who is taking over her father’s house. Christopher and Evelyn’s mother, her long time suitor Sir Bonamy and the sharp-tongued Dowager Lady Stavely keep the reader laughing as they react to situations and each other. The storyline was luckwarm to me though. It strained my credibility that Christopher was getting away with impersonating his brother. Despite them being twins, the two brothers have drastically different personalities and habits and I could have seen Christopher having more close calls than he did. Also, it seems like we see more interaction between Christopher and his mother than him and Cressy. I had mixed feelings about the pacing of the story. It felt slow at times but then that also gave the reader the chance to really feel a part of Heyer’s Regency England. She does a great job showing Regency England: the slang in the characters’ dialog as well as the details about fashion and other areas of life made me feel like I was there. This is a good read for sweet Regency Romance or anyone interested in the time period.

Note: Georgette Heyer is known as the writer of Regency romance. Anyone interested in Regency romance or just that era should try reading her. She also makes a good match for people who like ‘sweet’ romances versus ‘spicy’. I think other books are better than this one, so I will read another one later.

What else to read:

Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and other writers who lived and wrote in 1800s England.
Georgette Heyer's Regency World by Jennifer Kloester and Gerareme Tavendale for learning about the  places characters went, the food they ate, etc.
For other writers of sweet Regency, and some Georgian, romances the Good Ton website is a good place to go. (The website name, thenonesuch, comes from a title of a Heyer book.) The website is no longer adding books to its site, but has a database of titles and other interesting information.

The Maid of Fairbourne Hall is another good Regency Romance. I have an entry for this book on the blog.