I liked that the worst people in this book are more or less the main characters! I prefer characters who are acknowledged as terrible, but are still human, to ones who are held up as supposedly perfect paragons (and Jack does not impress me with how quickly he shrugs off the first attempted abduction/rape of Diana with "Oh I don't know. I dare say we are none of us exactly saints." <-- Actual quote. WHAT. Even his friend is taken aback. This is not romantic hero material in my book).

Not bad for her first book, written at age 17. Her later books are fantastic and you can see the seeds here.

This was not as good as The Grand Sophy at all. It was more hokey and completely silly. They stay friends with a potential rapist?!? Whatev. But it was still entertaining. Hence, 3 stars.

One brother accepts another's guilt. Unable to stay away from England any longer he comes back and becomes a "Robin Hood" highwayman. When he rescues a young lady from an abduction, they fall in love.

I didn’t realize until reading other reviews of The Black Moth that this was Heyer’s first novel, written when she was 19. Heyer was amazingly talented and a great writer—nevertheless, this is very much a first novel written by a 19-year-old. It’s super-melodramatic, cliched, and jammed with miscommunications and misunderstandings. The most compelling character is the main villain, after which the book is named, and you can definitely tell that Heyer found him the most interesting character as well (she ended up re-naming and re-purposing him for a different novel in which he’s redeemed and finds love).

For all that, it’s a really fun and well-written melodrama, if you enjoy them (and I do!). It just lacks the sophistication and deftness of Heyer’s later works.

One of the earliest she wrote -- if not the earliest: she was 17 when her first book was published0.
Such a difference by the time she wrote "These old shades", which was much better. This is the one where Duke of Avon meets & marries Leonie
--In this one, the Duke of Avon was a very minor character. It is mainly about the Carstares brothers, Diana, and the Duke of Andover

I hadn't read any Heyer in years, and, needing a mindless audiobook to listen to while I knitted, found this one on the YouTubes. It was a librivox recording, but the narrator, Terra Mendoza, did quite well. There were some mispronunciations, and the Irish accent was painful to listen to, but I couldn't have done any better, so thanks, Terra!

The Black Moth was Heyer's first book which she wrote, if I remember correctly, to entertain her convalescent brother. The characters were fun. Tracy is absolutely delightfully appalling. What a horrible, horrible man. It made you think about how it was back then, where aristos could make off with women and no-one cared. It's fun to read this book and to pretend, knowing it's all going to turn out alright, but the reality was not so pleasant.

Anyway, the story is so well written and is quite delightful from beginning to end. Clearly now I have to re-read/listen to These Old Shades. But first I need to find a new knitting pattern.

This book is really a 4.5, but we don't have that option yet...

The bookstore where I work had extremely lovely editions of three of Georgette Heyer's Regency romances... and I have a discount. I bought this one, started it, and then went back and got the other two before I was even 1/3 of the way through the first one. I found these solely on a recommendation from Shannon, for which I will be eternally grateful!

Reading this book was like watching a favorite movie, or hanging out with close friends, where the environment is so comfortable and the entertainment is always first-rate. I love Heyer's prose style, her characters are endearing, the pictures she paints create bustling English cities and vivid countryside. (I have to confess, I enjoyed it all the more for having been to Bath and seen the Royal Crescent, etc.; when Andrew Belmanoir was said to have fought a duel on Crescent Fields it made me smile!)

I particularly enjoyed the plot of this specific book. I hadn't really read anything quite like it before. I don't read a lot of romance, so perhaps noblemen dress up a highwaymen with great frequency; but it's new to me. I liked learning all the reasons and rationalizations for each person's actions, both of the past and the present, and also liked watching it all unfold. There were moments when I feared things were going horribly wrong; moments that made me laugh right out loud (these are the moments that made me feel like I was among friends); and most of all, and ending that involved some swashbuckling (that just barely kept from going over the top and turning into an Errol Flynn movie), and settled things nicely.

Thank you again to Shannon for pointing me in the direction of this author. I look forward all the other books that await me!