No Angel

No Angel by Penny Vincenzi

Well, it was time to head back to my father's summer cottage in Canada, along with my husband and adult children.  My daughter and I decided to have a mother/daughter bookclub and this English high society family drama  was a perfect choice!  Aristocrat Celia Beckenham dismays her family by marrying down into the Lytton family publishing dynasty.  Frustrated by the constraints of the times and her class, she plunges into the business much against the wishes of her husband and family.  Oliver Lytton, her husband and the head of the firm, would rather she take care of their growing family, which ultimately includes a waif that Celia believes she has rescued from the meanness of poverty.  Still, their passionate marriage endures until the ravages of World War 1 change their lives and the fortunes of the business forever. Spanning the years before the war, and after, in England and across the ocean in New York, this first book of a trilogy does a masterful job of exploring the personalities, emotions, motivations and choices made by a vast cast of characters and sets the stage for the sequel, Something Dangerous, and the third in the trilogy, Into Temptation.