Four Weddings and a Sixpence

November 15, 2016
Four boarding school friends find everlasting love with the help of a magical coin in this historical-romance anthology that weaves through the popular wedding rhyme, "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue--and a sixpence for your shoe."Anne, Ellie, Cordelia, and Bea, friends at Madame Rochambeaux's Gentle School for Girls, discover a sixpence in Anne's mattress and whimsically decide that the old coin will help them find true love when the time comes. Ten years later, Anne is close to the deadline to find a husband set by her strict uncle when she meets the rakish Duke of Dorset. He agrees to help her find a husband, then falls in love with her himself and must convince her that he's worthy. Happily married, Anne hands the coin off to Cordelia, who turns to a childhood friend to escort her to Anne's wedding, since her aunts are trying to match her up and she's told them she's engaged to Kipp. Unfortunately, Kipp is an impoverished earl practically engaged to an heiress, so even though Cordelia moves him like no other woman, he can't afford to marry her. Can he? Once Kipp and Cordelia are sorted, she gives the coin to Elinor, who is set on marrying an aristocrat whose connections may save her father from being investigated for war profiteering by the man she had once thought to marry, Lawrence Blackthorne. When Blackthorne steals the coin from her, they may have to revisit their romance, and Ellie may have to face some difficult truths about her father. Finally, Bea, a scientist at heart with no desire to marry, meets her perfect match in an injured lord who is learning to see the world through new eyes after a devastating accident. A fun idea connects four charming stories, though they build to a pinnacle with Quinn's.

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December 1, 2016

When four boarding school roommates find an old sixpence hidden in one of their mattresses, they make a pact that each will use it in turn as a lucky charm to find true love and the perfect husband. As adults, they know this was all in fun--until it begins to work! Quinn's brief prolog, "Something Old," beautifully sets the stage for the four novellas that follow. A young woman who must wed before she turns 21 accepts the aid of a rakehell duke in finding a worthy husband and winds up with the duke instead in Stefanie Sloane's "Something New"; a desperate young woman begs her childhood friend to pretend temporarily to be her fiance in order to stop her meddling aunts' matchmaking attempts in Elizabeth Boyle's "Something Borrowed"; a government investigation and the theft of the sixpence cause problems for the disillusioned heroine in Laura Lee Guhrke's "Something Blue"; and a science-oriented heroine who's never believed in the coin's power learns otherwise when she connects with an especially intriguing physics scholar in Quinn's ."..and a Sixpence in Her Shoe." VERDICT A clever premise, inventive situations, and witty repartee make this sexy anthology the perfect romantic read for those cold midwinter nights. Favorite historical authors Quinn, Sloane, Boyle, and Guhrke all live in the Pacific Northwest.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2016
In this sterling collection of Regency-set stories, it looks just like a tarnished old sixpence, but for four friends, who first meet at Madame Rochambeaux's School for Gentle Girls, it could prove to be a talisman for finding true love. In Stefanie Sloan's Something New, Anne Brabourne needs to find a biddable husband ASAP, which means she will take any help she can from the coin or even the rakish duke of Dorset. Cordelia Padley, in Elizabeth Boyle's Something Borrowed, fashions her fiance out of thin air, but now she needs to borrow someone like Kipp Talcott to temporarily play the part. In Laura Lee Guhrke's Something Blue, Lawrence Blackthorne tries to thwart Elinor Daventry's plans to marry Lord Bluestone by stealing the sixpence from her. Julia Quinn's heroine Beatrice Heywood's scientific nature has her scoffing at the powers of the sixpence since it seems determined to pair her up with Frederick Grey-Osbourne in A Sixpence in Her Shoe. Each love story in this superbly crafted anthology is expertly imbued with the distinctive literary DNA of its creator, and the end result is a wonderfully witty, sweep-you-off-your-feet romantic experience for long-time fans as well as readers new to these marvelously gifted writers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)