April Lady is just a mess all around. According to her biographers Heyer was just recovering from a major bout of illness and financial troubles, and her most recent biographer hints that Heyer found out that her husband was having an affair at about this time. Result: borrowing plot from previous books, a lot of repetition, more jargon than usual, and the hero letting the woman he loves suffer needlessly worrying about money. AUUGH. Not to mention the girl who is like, sure, I'll steal an incredibly valuable set of jewels from the woman I'm supposedly friends with so I can run off with a guy that I'm going to want to divorce in three months anyway.

I laugh all the way through Arabella until I reach the last twenty or so pages and then...auugh.