This HaBO request comes from Karen, who is looking for an older Regency:
For years I’ve been trying to re-find a book that I read somewhere around 1995 (it might have been 1996…or 1994), and I have very few details. Here is what I am pretty sure of:
It was a new release when I read it (so it would have been published somewhere between 1994-1996).
It was a Regency romance, and I think it was a Zebra Regency.
The general plot outline was a re-telling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There were two sets of young couples, an older fighting couple, and mix ups in who was in love with whom (in the young couples), and they all travel to Lake Country during midsummer, and there, the mix-up ensued.
The word “Lake” might have been in the title.
I have haunted used book stores trying to find it again (it was funny!), and through the hunting, have realized that it is NOT Lakeside Season or Midsummer Night’s Kiss (both by Cleo Chadwick… although I did probably also read both of those during that time period, because back then I read every Regency I could get my hands on). It’s also not Love on a Midsummer Night (published way too late).
I know these are very sketchy details, but maybe there is a fellow fan of Shakespeare re-tellings, who put this on their keeper shelf?
Several members of the Bitchery love a good retelling, so I’m sure someone knows this.
I hope someone figures it out, because it is all my catnip!
Wrong year, but it reminds me of The Lady Most Likely by Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Connie Brockway. House party with various couples.
Hmm, a number of the details are not quite right, but Mary Jo Putney’s Carousel of Hearts has a confusion among two young couples. It’s a Signet Regency from 1989. Not sure about the older couple or the Lake Country, but on the funny side and echoes of AMND sound right.
@Lace Thanks for the suggestion. I don’t think it’s Carousel of Hearts, because at some point (more recently – within the past 10 years) I was an Mary Jo Putney completist and went back and read her old regencies.
It’s weird that I can remember exactly where I was when I read this HABO title — it was summer, and I was teaching Freshman composition in the evenings, and I remember reading it before the class started. I can picture the building I was sitting in. But I can’t remember the title of the book.
Memory is weird.
Useful list of Zebra Regency romances here – https://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Zebra+Regency+Romance