However, there are pitfalls for an author who chooses to depend heavily on continuing characters. Readers unfamiliar with the previous books may well feel that they are coming in at the middle of the action. Even those who have read and enjoyed the previous stories may not recall enough of the details to feel completely au courrant with what is going on. To an certain extent, this is a problem with Mistletoe Mayhem.

Lady Madelyn and Robert Langtry are the protagonists. Two years earlier, they fell in love. But Madelyn is a great heiress and Robert a mere country gentleman. Her guardian rejected Robert’s suit and he refused Madelyn’s suggestion that they elope to Gretna Green. Such an action would have lost her fortune and position. Moreover, Robert had just become guardian of his two nieces and two nephews. Madelyn was not interested taking charge of the orphans. Indeed, in The Lieutenant’s Lady, Madelyn came across as something of a spoiled brat.

Vanessa had invited Robert and his charges to the house party in part to try to throw him together with a worthy widow who, everyone thinks, would make him a perfect wife. Then, her father-in-law announces that he is bringing Lady Madelyn to visit. Vanessa, knowing of the thwarted romance, is not pleased.

Huntington does a very good job of interweaving all of this backstory into her tale. The reader will not miss any of the necessary details. But what is missing is the romance. Neither Robert nor Madelyn has fallen out of love in the intervening two years. But unless the reader has total recall about what happened in the previous book or still has it sitting somewhere on her shelves, she has no clue as to why and how the two fell in love. Someone who has not read The Lieutenant’s Lady will be even more at sea. Since one of the main attractions of any romance novel is watching the characters fall in love, this is a problem.

What we have in Mistletoe Mayhem instead is the story of how Madelyn and Robert finally overcome the barriers that keep them apart. A significant impediment is the hostility of Robert’s oldest niece who well remembers Madelyn’s lack of sympathy two years earlier. Another is Madelyn’s belief that she is incapable of taking on responsibility for four young children. A third is the difference in their stations and Robert’s understandable scruples about this gap.

Huntington very cleverly shows us how and why these barriers gradually crumble. She shows us how much Madelyn has grown and matured. She makes us care about the characters and root for them to find happiness. She tells a heartwarming and at times humorous story.

But despite all that is very good about Mistletoe Mayhem, I find that I can only rate it acceptable. I find myself wishing for a prologue or something where I could see Madelyn and Robert fall in love and watch the pain of their parting. Something of this sort would have transformed this into a very, very good Regency romance.

--Jean Mason