Who would enjoy reading A Perfect Match?

How can I persuade you to read my book?

I guess that is the question that every author asks. Enough people have read A Perfect Match and told me that they like it for me to be sure that there will be others who will enjoy it too. But how do I find that audience?

Perhaps it would help if I tried to define who I think might enjoy my book. I think you might enjoy my book if:

• You like reading Jane Austen - and I mean reading the books and not just watching the film/TV versions. Not that I would dare to liken myself to Jane Austen, but if you like the pace and language of her books, then I think there is a reasonable chance that you might like my style.

• You enjoy real historical people interacting with fictional characters, like Judith Taverner talking to Beau Brummell in Georgette Heyer’s Regency Buck.

• You enjoy a story which is rich in historical detail about events and places.

• You prefer a romance where the hero and heroine save the sex until after they are married (and the book is finished!).

• You like romances with a bit more to them than boy meets girl, overcomes a few obstacles and lives happily ever after.

Four people who appear in A Perfect Match:
Top left: Painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds
Top right: Whig hostess, Elizabeth Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne
Bottom left: Bluestocking hostess, Elizabeth Montagu
Bottom right: Abolitionist MP, William Wilberforce (1)

What readers are saying about A Perfect Match

"A Perfect Match captured me from start to finish and I devoured it within two days of receiving it."

"Great historical romance with nice little twists and turns. Interwoven with real historical characters and facts."

"Good period detail and an unusual attention to politics and religion. It was particularly good to see the faith of characters, in historically plausible ways, taken seriously as a plot device."

“I loved the characters and story. It brought to life a period of time perfectly; the restraints and expectations for a young girl, set beautifully between Weymouth and London. The scenes set locally in Weymouth really were a treat bringing to life the history that sits around us every day. A good read – loved it.”

Excerpts from a review by Regency Reader:

“True Austen purists will like the streamlined non-melodramatic approach to romance.”

“There is also something special about the pace that reminded me a lot of reading Austen contemporaries. I think in part it’s the way the history is woven throughout the narrative, given a strong sense of time and place, rather than thrown against the page to see what sticks.”

“Fantastically researched, clean with a traditional pace that speaks to the Georgian era.”

You can read the full review here.

Goodreads - a place to find book recommendations

If you are not a member of the Goodreads website, I can recommend it as a great way to find out about new books that you might enjoy based on what you have already read and liked. The listopia section – lists of books meeting all sorts of different criteria – is a particularly good way of finding book recommendations. For example, A Perfect Match is listed in “History through novels: England/UK”, “Clean Regency (or around then) Romance Novels” and “Books set in Dorset”, so you immediately get an idea of what A Perfect Match and other books in those lists are like.

This post was originally designed to promote a giveaway which ended on 14 October 2015, but you can still find me on Goodreads.
 
Note
(1) Sources of pictures in collage. Click on the links to find out more about these people:
Sir Joshua Reynolds from The literary works of Sir Joshua Reynolds ed J Farington and E Malone (1819)
Elizabeth Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne from In Whig Society, correspondence, edited by Mabell, Countess of Airlie (1921)
Elizabeth Montagu from a print on display at Dr Johnson's House Museum, London
William Wilberforce aged 20 from Life of William Wilberforce by his sons, RI & S Wilberforce (1838)