I like to call Virginia Heath’s romances the courtship of flapping hands and unruly eyeballs. Her comic conceit is to create two decent, likeable protagonists and have their body parts gesture, flap, and move in amorous-hinting ways against what their minds tell them. This is true of her first in a new series, All’s Fair In Love and War, as it is other Heath romances. I’ve liked them all and this one as well. I like the idea the body knows what reason and emotional resistance are telling her hero and heroine cannot be. And yet, it can and does. In the telling, Heath is funny and her secondary characters, one of her great strengths, including the four-footed variety, are a hoot. The conflict is light, but the emotions run deep. Heath, like most comic writers, are damned with faint praise, like “fun” and “light”, but why is seeing life from a comic perspective less valuable than tragic? An argument as old as Aristotle. If you’re a romance reader, you know where you stand. As for Heath’s romance, here are the blurbish details:  

When Harry Kincaid’s flighty older sister decides to join her husband on an Egyptian expedition, Harry, a former naval captain, is left in the lurch, minding her three unruly children and giant, mad dog. But Harry has a busy career at the Admiralty that requires all his attention, and he has no clue how to manage the little rascals or when his sister is coming back. In desperation, he goes to Miss Prentice’s School for Young Ladies prepared to pay whatever it takes to hire an emergency governess quick sharp to ensure everything in his formerly ordered house is run shipshape again.

Thanks to her miserable, strict upbringing, fledgling governess Georgie Rowe does not subscribe to the ethos that children should be seen and not heard. She believes childhood should be everything hers wasn’t—filled with laughter, adventure, and discovery. Thankfully, the three Pendleton children she has been tasked with looking after are already delightfully bohemian and instantly embrace her unconventional educational approach. Their staid, stickler-for-the-rules uncle, however, is another matter entirely.

Georgie and Harry continue to butt heads over their differences, but with time it seems that in this case, their attraction is undeniable—and all is indeed fair in love and war.

The blurb overemphasizes Harry and Georgie’s disagreement over paedagogy, which does take up the narrative’s first third. And it is well-conceived in setting Harry and Georgie up as opposites: her loose style to his buttoned-up. But I liked Heath showing Georgie how Harry’s stickler-style hid his indulgent love for his nieces and nephews, how they took advantage of his generosity, all in great comic shenanigan mode. This allowed Georgie to see Harry’s soft side, actually Harry’s only side. Eventually, Harry sees how Georgie can exact discipline and love of learning of the children while he buys them too much ice cream, too many sausages for their dog, and spoils them rotten. The children, hellions all, adore both Harry and Georgie because they know they are loved. As is evident when Harry’s wonderful sister returns…

The romance hinges on mistaken perceptions, true-blue desires, and deep-seated vulnerabilities. Georgie, an orphan since her beloved mother died, was at the mercy of her strict, negligent, heartless stepfather. Miss Prentice saved her on scholarship, but her years of a lonely, emotionally cold life with her stepfather left her without any desire for a repeat with a similar man. Until all of Harry’s actions belie every blustering word he utters. As for Harry, the child of a chaotic, debt-ridden childhood, order and stability are more important than indulging his heart and other bits. In our understanding, Harry is a workaholic and an unhappy, dissatisfied one. Innovative paedagogical misses aren’t in his plans. 

The humour, characters, secondary as well, were delightful; the romance? Well, there’s something romance writers do which I find vexing, a romance where the hero and heroine’s goal is to avoid the other. Problem? Yes, because characters don’t spend enough on-page time together to develop the relationship. In part, Heath solves this with the hilarious Felix, Marianne, and Grace, Harry’s nephew and nieces, forcing Harry and Georgie to negotiate learning, outings, even the dog Norbert; on the other hand, Harry and Georgie spend a lot of page time avoiding each other, which is too bad because the scenes with the children, by the seashore for example, or verbally sparring in the schoolroom, are wonderful.

The conflict keeping these two apart? A tad eye-rolling. Because Harry cannot give up his career, his financial security and status, a total softie as he is, to marry Georgie. And Georgie can’t make her life the lonely one of a sailor’s wife. They’re dolts, really, and everyone knows it, so that redeems the situation somewhat. But this bit did drag on. Then Harry makes a ridiculous request of Georgie and a muddle of everything, so that Heath can bring him to an absolutely lovely declaration and proposal to make up for it. I loved how Heath makes Harry and Georgie awkward and shy, self-effacing and humble. There’s not an iota of arrogance in any of these characters and it was lovely to spend time with her creations.

Virginia Heath’s All’s Fair In Love and War is published by St. Martin’s Griffin and released on May 28. I received an e-galley, from St. Martin’s Griffin, via Netgalley. This review is a reflection of my honest and AI-free opinion.