The Little Lady Agency and the Prince

Categories: Romance , Staff Picks , Fiction

Of all the literary sisters of Bridget Jones, Hester Browne’s Melissa Romney-Jones (a.k.a. Honey Blennerhesket) is one of the most charming. 

Not that Melissa would really find Bridget a kindred spirit.  Melissa is a more old-fashioned girl who would never let her standards down far enough to drink and smoke and slack off at work as much as Bridget and her friends, and she wouldn’t be at home with their sarcastic humor.  (Melissa never gets double entendres.)  Though of course she would make perfectly cheerful conversation with any of them at a party—nice girls do, after all.

But her spunky optimism and determination to find true love make Melissa Bridget’s sister under the skin.

We first met Melissa in The Little Lady Agency, when Melissa decided to put her unusual talents to use by opening a business under that name.  All of her old-fashioned domestic accomplishments (not to mention her busty figure that fits 1950s-era clothes better than modern fashions) and her firm belief in the social niceties made her the perfect advisor for London’s clueless bachelors. 

Once she put on a blonde wig and transformed herself into Honey Blennerhesket, half sexpot, half stern nanny, she had the confidence to straighten out their love lives, wardrobe and hygiene gaffes, and family entanglements.

Not her own life, of course.  Over the course of three volumes (Little Lady, Big Apple, and now The Little Lady Agency and the Prince) Melissa has never quite got that right.  Her oddball family doesn’t understand why Melissa is so determined to make her business a success.  And even her apparently perfect boyfriend, gorgeous American businessman Jonathan Riley (an early client), doesn’t see why she needs her blonde alter ego for confidence, nor why she isn’t happy to follow him to New York and start a nice little social business of some kind there.

Only Melissa’s grandmother, a sexpot herself in her day, and Melissa’s flatmate, Nelson, are on her side.  And even Nelson is wary when Melissa’s grandmother persuades her to take on a truly notorious client, playboy prince Nicolas von Helsing-Alexandros in this latest adventure.  It’s Melissa’s mission to reform the rake.

These cheerful little romantic satires are perfect bonbons.  In fact, get some bonbons and spend an evening with Melissa.  She’s a delight.