Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer

Cousin Kate appears to be Georgette Heyer's go at writing a gothic romance. As such, it's a pretty servicable gothic, but also relegates most of Heyer's strengths to the sidelines.

Kate is a governess fallen on hard times who is abruptly reunited with her rich aunt-her father's half-sister, Minerva-who whicks Kate off to her counntry mansion and begins to not-so-subtly push Kate at her son, Torquil, and very determinedly away from Torquil's cousin, Philip. Torquil appears to be on the unbalanced side, things go bump in the night and make mysterious loud shrieking noises, servants show up with mysterious wounds, and people-particularly Philip-like to make oblique comments semi-warning Kate about things to the point where you want to reach into the book and go "Sweet mercy would you just say what you mean and get it over with already!!"

All of which is perfectly fine, except that Heyer's strength is in character interaction and dialogue and in her leads' sparring with each toher and sometimes others, and there isn't much of that here. I felt like I spent the book in the first half of Arabella where Arabella and Beaumaris barely interacted and I kept waiting for things to get going, but without Arabella's very fun second half.

Not a bad book and worth reading, but I don't think I'm very likely to reread this one.