The December 2022 #TBRChallenge is "Festive." I chose a collection of traditional Regency Christmas stories by quite well-known authors. The collection started out beautifully, sagged in the middle, and by the end, unfortunately didn't quite make it back to the high bar the first couple of stories set.

"The Lucky Coin" by Barbara Metzger (63 pages) - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sir Adam Standish, an impoverished baronet from Suffolk, is taking the long mail coach ride into London to plead for an extension on his mortgage, which is his pessimistic about receiving. A wizened old man on the coach quite literally gives him a penny for his thoughts - or, at the very least, a coin, which is unusual enough that Adam decides to sell it after his banker turns down his application. While in the rare coin shop, he meets the most beautiful woman he's ever laid his eyes on - and she happens to have a cachet of the same type of unusual coins! Adam's luck changes for the better at every turn after meeting the beautiful Jenna, and it seems to all be down to that chance meeting with the old man on the coach. This story has a lovely, light, fairy-tale quality to it that makes all of the coincidences and reversal of fortune inside a week seem plausible. I quite adored Adam and Jenna, and thought them a good match in the end. Whimsical!

"Following Yonder Star" by Emma Jensen (74 pages) - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Alice Ashe is serving as her younger sister's companion during said sister's final days of confinement with her pregnancy. Clarissa (the sister) is utterly self-absorbed; her husband died at Waterloo and she wants a girl child so that she can leave the Irish pigeonhole that is her late husband's estate and remake her life in London. A boy child - an heir - would tie her to the estate for the rest of her life, and she wants anything but that. The dead earl's brother, Sir Gareth, returns for the birth of his niece/nephew. He's hoping for a boy child, or else he's the heir to the estate that he never wanted. He's always been a world traveler, so the idea of being tied to one place in the wild Irish countryside is very much not appealing to him. Alice and Gareth were childhood sweethearts and shared a kiss before Gareth ran off to join the Navy and begin his world travels, so there is some old tension between them. An old Traveler woman advises both Alice and Gareth (at different times) to think hard about their choices in life, and this story culminates in a beautiful, emotional reunion scene between the two, enveloped in Christmas magic and Irish traditions. There is some delightful comic relief in the form of Alice and Clarissa's elderly father, who tries to wander off at every chance to "duel" with his old foe Mr. O'Neill.

At this point, I thought maybe there would be a continuing motif of wizened old strangers giving the MCs a hint at how to resolve their difficulties, and I was really looking forward to it, because one of the hardest things about short stories/novellas is buying that so much happens in such a short period of time. Basically having a fairy godmother/godfather waving a magic wand? That works for me, LOL. Unfortunately, that was not the case with the other 3 stories in this collection.

"The Merry Magpie" by Sandra Heath (61 pages) - ⭐⭐⭐
Sir Charles Neville's infidelity are revealed to his wife, Juliet, via her aunt's one-eyed magpie, Jack, in a horribly embarrassing, public scene one Christmas Eve. Juliet banishes Charles from their home, and he stays away for 6 years, eating his heart out. He knew it was a mistake to cheat on his wife, but basically he married young and thought that ~all~ men took mistresses as a matter of course, and who was he not to sow some wild oats? He realizes his mistake immediately, and wants nothing more than to beg his wife's forgiveness. He returns to the aunt's house to inquire as to where his wife might be, and runs into the infamously bad-mouthed Jack again. The magpie, being attracted to shiny things, steals the wedding band that Charles keeps on a ribbon around his neck and hides it, causing much dismay among the group. Juliet's aunt plays a bit of matchmaker, sending Charles to the island retreat where Juliet is staying, unbeknownst to either of them. The two confront each other and the bird, and eventually settle their differences. I thought this story was a bit unbalanced, and for being the titular character, Jack the magpie actually plays a very small role here.

"Best Wishes" by Edith Layton (55 pages) - ⭐⭐ 1/2
A newly married couple - Jonathan, Viscount Rexford and Pamela Arthur, the daughter of a country squire - are arguing about where they will spend their first Christmas together as a married couple. Jonathan has promised their presence at the Fanshawes' without his wife's consent, and she is very angry. Turns out Mrs. Fanshawe is a former mistress of Jonathan's, which YIKES ON BIKES, I get what Pamela doesn't want to go there. She'd rather spend the holiday with her enormous family in the country. Jonathan is very typically cool and icy Society, estranged from his family, and wants to give his wife the leg up she didn't have before she married him. They eventually compromise and decide to spend half the holiday with the Fanshawes (the Society invitation) and half the holiday with Pamela's family. Well, they end up leaving the Fanshawes early after Pamela is pawed by Mr. Fanshawe during a "scavenger hunt." Jonathan apologizes profusely and they go to the Arthurs in the country. Pamela is so thrilled to be back among her many brothers and sisters and memories that she doesn't realize just how much of an outcast Jonathan (and her brother in law) are among her family, and she gets angry with him for not yakking a mile a minute with all of them. One one think that the point of this story would be that both learn that they are their own family unit now and need to create their own Christmas traditions, but no. In the end, Jonathan is basically absorbed into his wife's family traditions. I didn't really like Pamela - I found her to be very immature - so this wasn't an ending I particularly enjoyed.

"Let Nothing You Dismay" by Carla Kelly (77 pages) - ⭐⭐⭐
Lord Trevor Chase is a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, considered rather hopeless because he advocates for the street children and rarely wins his cases. He is also known to be suicidal around the holidays, so everyone is rather relieved when he's called to his family home in York because of a family emergency. His brother and sister-in-law, the Marquess and Marchioness of Falstoke, are with their eldest daughter's family, as her children are suffering with measles, so Lord Trevor is basically keeping an eye on the remaining, single children: Lady Janet (18), Lady Lucinda (12), and young David (7). Lady Lucinda is returning home from the Select Academy in Bath, accompanied by a teacher, Cecelia Ambrose. Miss Ambrose's plan is basically to deliver Lady Lucy, have a word with her mother about Lucy and Janet's strained relationship, and return to Bath. Unfortunately, when they arrive and realize Lucy's parents aren't there, Cecelia's plans change. She's actually familiar with Lord Trevor's work in the court system and admires him for it, and is willing to stay on and assist when she realizes that he's rather helpless with his own nieces and nephews. A midnight fire at the manor house forces the group to retreat to the dower house on the properly, and basically they are able to repair their various relationships, etc in the cozy comfort of the smaller building. Janet is getting married in the spring and has basically lost herself in the first blush of love, not realizing how she's alienating her siblings. Her pride is taken down a few notches by both Trevor and Cecelia. David is an adorable little boy who basically hero worships his uncle, and Lucy is a spunky tween caught in a tough part of life. Trevor and Cecelia consider themselves black sheep (Trevor, for pursuing a career when he's the second son and then brother to a marquess; Cecelia, because she's an adopted half-English, half-Egyptian who faces lots of racial hatred in lilly white England) and that they have much in common, and eventually fall in love during their forced proximity.

Generally I love Carla Kelly's stories, but this one was kinda "meh" for me because there's quite a bit of proselytizing (like that's the cure of suicidal holiday thoughts, yick) and there's some additional, weird details that could've been cut with no loss of value (like apparently Trevor lied about the extent of the damage to the manor house to purposely keep everyone in the cramped dower house for....Reasons). In the end, this was a disappointing story for me, and never really brought the end of the collection back to the high standards of the first couple of stories. ( )

I've been on a bit of a Regency kick recently, so when I stumbled across this anthology of Christmas-themed Regency short stories a few weeks ago, I thought it might be a fun holiday read. It didn't hurt that the cover was fairly attractive (what can I say? quite a few of the romances I've been reading recently have covers that are a little too aggressively pastel... this, even with the Thomas Kinkade echoes, is High Art by comparison), and that the five contributors were all previously unknown to me, providing an opportunity to try new authors in the genre.

Unfortunately, I found Regency Christmas Wishes a thoroughly unsatisfactory reading experience, and wouldn't recommend a single one of the stories it contains. None of the characters felt fully realized to me, which I might have laid at the door of the short-story form itself, with its necessary brevity, had I not already read and enjoyed Georgette Heyer's brilliant romantic shorts, in her Pistols for Two and Other Stories. I also thought many of the narrative developments were rather unbelievable, and while I realize that romance is not always the most realistic of genres, I should at least be able to suspend my disbelief, while reading.

The collection leads off with Barbara Metzger's The Lucky Coin, in which impoverished baronet Sir Adam Standish, in London to plead for more time to repay the mortgage taken out on his lands by his dissolute father, falls instantly in love with the beautiful Miss Jenna Relaford, when he sees her in a curiosity shop. Unfortunately, Miss Relaford is the niece of Sir Adam's banker, who has no very good opinion of down-on-their-luck aristocrats trying to recoup their losses by marrying heiresses from the mercantile class. Leaving aside the idea of the magical wishing coin, which I found inane, as well as the love-at-first-sight motif (never a favorite), I thought Metzger completely ignored the very real class issues here, and resolved everything a little too neatly. Individual rating: 2 stars.

Next up is Following Yonder Star, by Emma Jensen, in which Miss Alice Ashe - a spinster in her late twenties - confronts the man who broke her heart, by leaving their small Irish town years before, and never returning. Here you have some rather contrived conflicts - Gareth Blackwell fervently hopes his brother's widow will bear a son, so he will not have to be the next Earl of Kilcullen, while the widowed countess herself desires a daughter, in order not to be tied to the estate. I appreciated that Jensen had to make her hero appealing, and that painting him as a grasping tyrant would hardly have fit the bill, but I also found her idealized portrait of Gareth - getting along so well with his tenant farmers, determined to better their lot - rather difficult to take, given what I know of the behavior of the Irish aristocracy just a few decades later, during the Great Famine. Still, as a story this was probably the most enjoyable of the lot. Individual rating: 2.5 stars.

The third selection was Sandra Heath's The Merry Magpie, in which Sir Charles Neville, returning to England after an absence of six years, seeks out his estranged wife at Christmas, determined to make amends for the philandering that led to their separation. Of all the stories in Regency Christmas Wishes, I think I found this the least convincing. Given how common it was for aristocratic men of this period to keep mistresses - many other Regency novels comment on this - I found it difficult to believe that Sir Charles would have been vilified in quite the way that Heath depicts. Yes, his wife Juliet would have been terribly hurt, and it's possible there would have been a separation, but I doubt that society would have countenanced her tossing him out, regardless of his behavior. This story also had some unfortunately anachronistic language - Lady Marchwell actually says to Sir Charles, at one point: "Oh, poor you!" - and an unlikely sexual encounter in a rowboat (on a river). Individual rating: .5 stars.

Best Wishes, by Edith Layton, is the fourth selection, and follows the story of the newly wed Viscount and Viscountess of Rexford, who have their first real argument about where to spend the holidays: with his pre-marriage set (including a former lover), or with her extended family. Oh lord! This one has a bed-hopping house party! I was rolling my eyes... Individual rating: 2 stars.

The fifth and final story was Carla Kelly's Let Nothing You Dismay, in which Lord Trevor Chase - an outcast from society, because of his work as a barrister, representing children in the criminal courts - and Miss Cecilia Ambrose, a half-English half-Egyptian school-teacher, who accompanies Lord Trevor's niece home from school for the holidays. This was an interesting story, in that it made reference to much darker realities than I have usually seen in Regency fiction. I had difficulty believing, however, that even a reform-minded radical would have discussed "buggery," or being suspected as a "sodomite," with a respectable woman. I also wasn't thrilled with the idea, implied in the resolution of the story, that love can save an addict, or any other kind of psychologically wounded individual from themselves. Individual rating: 1 star.

Overall, not a very impressive group of tales. Averaging out the stars, you get 1.6 stars, but hey! It's the holidays, so I rounded up. ( )

The Lucky Coin is the best story in this book. The themes range from uplifting to uplifting to desolate, but all with the fairy tale ending.

First story - fluffy, but cute. Nice characters. The taking back ill-considered wishes got dull quickly - and I'd have got rid of the coins, not passed them out to my kids! Second story - rather annoying. It would have been better at novel length - as it was it felt rather rushed, with insufficient character development. And the cliffhanger ending was just stupid (is it a cliffhanger if there's no next chapter to resolve it?). Third - eh. Lightweight. No interest in either - any - of the characters. And Jack was made to be too much - the stealing makes sense, the delivery does _not_. Fourth - um. It's sweet, but there's not much story there. Certainly not a romance - the one thing neither of them ever doubt is their love. Actually, it's the book equivalent of her family's stories - only interesting if you know the people involved and care about them, and of course I don't. Fifth - oh, wow. It's still too short - character development is seriously rushed - but I _like_ these people. Both Trevor and Cecelia have unexpected depths. Trevor's problem is a real one, and really solveable. I'll be looking for more from Carla Kelly. ( )