Dear Bartleby

Dear Bartleby (2023) Sarah Wallace (Meddle & Mend #4)

Seb, youngest sibling of Gavin and Gerry has been sent down for Oxford for one too many pranks.

Father sat me down in his study and told me I need to learn to be a proper gentleman. Ominous start. He listed out all manner of qualities I appear to be lacking: responsibility, gravity, good judgment. Frankly, I forget the rest of them.

So their father has sent him to live with Gavin and Charles. And one of his demands is that Sebastian keep a journal.

Gavin frowned in his usual way and said, “Seb, a journal is for personal thoughts. I would never betray your privacy in such a way. But this does give me a great deal of concern for what your personal thoughts actually are.”

Initially Seb tries his usual tricks and pranks, but he is first ignored, and then firmly told that some things will not be tolerated.

“It is inappropriate to conduct such things with servants. Has no one ever told you this?”

“I would never have taken you for a classist,” I retorted.

“Far from it,” he said. “It is not inappropriate because they are of a lower class than you. It is inappropriate because you are a guest in the home in which they are working. Many would not feel comfortable refusing advances, even if they did not want them.”

But as lessons are forced upon him, he slowly begins to learn that being send down from Oxford–far from being the worst thing that could happen to him may well be the best.

The story is written as Sebastian’s journal entries, and you see (more quickly than you might expect (except not really in retrospect, because he’s not actually a bad person)) mature and grow and learn.

And fall in love.

Although when he was bothering Pip I don’t know how the rest of the family kept from slapping him.

This isn’t quite a romance, as we don’t really meet Seb’s love interest 30% of the way into the book and the focus is on Sebastian’s growth as a person, but he does get an HEA–and more importantly, deserves that HEA.

Characters: Sebastian Hartford, Gavin Hartford, Mr. Charles Kentworthy, Gerry Hartford, Mr. Pip Standish, Viscount Bertie Finlington, Rose, Julia, Aunt Lily and Uncle Gregory, Miss Cornelia Locke, Mr. Laurence Ayles, Major Carlton Wilburforce, Sir Ronald Sinclair, Mr. David Voss, Mrs. Lydia Fossett, Dukex of Molbury, Robert Parks, Mr. Hartford, Mrs. Ridley, Sir James Badgeley, Lady St. John

Rating: 8/10

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