A good gallop of a read. What’s more it was a gift made of a favourite book; so that’s special.

I'm glad that I knew going in that this was a gothic. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it if I hadn't been prepared, but knowing that, I really enjoyed it. I especially liked that the main character had depth and agency, even when she didn't make the best of choices. I was also slightly surprised at the lack of awfulness in the descriptions and portrayal of China.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for other books by this author in the library.

I liked it more than Tregaron's Daughter which I also couldn't stop reading. Adventure and romance set in China and England around the beginning of the 20th century. I have 3 more books by this author waiting and then what?

Anne of Green Gables x The Scarlet Pimpernel

I would have devoured this as a preteen.

The main character was extremely likeable. The setting was memorable. The plot had some debonair twists. Published in 1973, but reads like it was published way earlier—so there's some funky pacing here and there.

Very nicely done, if you can get over the plethora of unlikely coincidences.

2nd, 3rd or 4th reading? Not sure. I read this book back when I was a teenager when I was first discovering romantic fiction.
I came to Madeleine Brent via Merlin's Keep, which I loved so much I immediately devoured the rest of her books. Imagine my surprise when I learned decades later that Madeleine Brent was a pseudonym for Peter O'Donnell. He wrote such strong female leads, young women who weren't afraid to break the rules and who saved the day - and often their male love interests.
Moonraker's Bride is my second favorite of his romance novels (second to Merlin's Keep). A young English woman, born and raised in China at the turn of the 20th century, is burdened with running a mission orphanage. She meets two dashing young Englishmen, desperate rivals in pursuit of a hidden treasure, and her life is turned upside down. The story includes mystery, intrigue, and adventure, and is an utterly compelling read.

I love, love, love this book! I first read it as a teenager, but I think I love it more now as an adult. This is another marriage of convenience novel, but it is fresh and original.

I love Lucy's character- she refuses to be anything other than herself, although she tries to fit in. I also love how she is loyal and steadfast.

Great novel- if you can find it, read it!

This was a re-read of a beloved book from my teenaged years, and it stands up really well. Now I've read a lot more, I can see how the plot fits together, but the funny bits like the speeded up hymn singing are still funny, Lucy is still adorable, and Nick is still a perfect romantic hero. (And if only they'd just talk to one another instead of going through all that misunderstanding!)
So, lots of fun, and I seem to remember also enjoying the one where the heroine was brought up in Tibet, so I might look out for that again.

Well! I don't know where to begin, this was just so good. 4 1/2, almost 5

Lucy Waring, is one of the most adorable heroines I have had the fortune to meet in a book. I liked her just as much as the Lucy Waring in This Rough Magic, (I read TRM and Moonraker's Bride within a day of each other or I'd never have noticed, unless I read Hannah's review)

I Love Lucy, her Chinese ways, sweet manners and how she was determined to do what was right, not what would please everyone else. (similar to the other Lucy, both did what was right, not what would please others) I thought it was charming how in China she was called Lu-tsi, as no one could say "Lucy". The culture is woven so carefully that I really felt the culture shock Lucy felt in England. That helped me to really feel like I was there with her, and I wouldn't have felt that otherwise.

What I didn't like was that the beginning and end were short, while the middle was long. I wouldn't complain if… If there had been more communicate between Lucy and the hero who I won't name. But I did love him, he was the most perfect, imperfect hero ever. Everything I hated about A Tale of Two Cities was fixed, and the things I loved, kept. Because, yes the hero in this book is like the Hero in A Tale of Two Cities, I couldn't help but draw the comparison.

It wasn't as good as The Long Masquerade or Golden Urchin, but it was still a reread. I'll be rereading this mainly to revisit the lovable characters.

A mild PG

n  A View of Lu-sti's China, (Brückenschlag) n

Beautiful!

The historical romance genre has never been a particular favorite of mine, but that may be because I’ve read the wrong type (i.e., too many bonnets.) Madeleine Brent—otherwise known as Peter O’Donnell, British mystery writer—caught my attention right away with teenage Lucy and her struggling mission home in China. This is the first Brent/O’Donnell novel I’ve read, but it shouldn’t be the last.

Lucy Waring is a unique heroine: English, but orphaned so young in China that she grew up generally thinking of herself as Chinese. With the head missionary ill and all support cut off, Lucy finds herself responsible for the abandoned children who live at the mission, and she’s absorbed enough of the culture to wonder, pragmatically, why the missionary would never sell off the grown girls as concubines when they usually ended up as such anyway. Lucy's English nature asserts itself only in musical taste and in wondering how Chinese parents—usually fathers—abandon baby girls to die.

Of course, an English stranger shows up, and the hardworking, Chinese-thinking Lucy finds herself plunged into a classic European Gothic plot. The juxtaposition makes for some amusing moments, especially when she returns to her native country and must live with the all-too-easily shockable gentry. Riddles and mysterious old manors baffle her, as do the restrictive rules and clothing; wild coincidences surprise but hardly faze her, and she works her way out of difficulty after difficulty with naive but effective logic. All the while, of course, she wonders again and again about the stranger she married: his roughness, his secrets, his one kindness, and “the laughing devils in his eyes.”

I suppose it’s all predictable enough, but I’ve never been the predicting type, and the absurd old-fashioned foreshadowing of the “Little did I know” type had the intended effect of keeping me turning pages when I probably should have been doing other things. It’s outdated stylistically, but it works perfectly well.

I'm not schooled enough in the subtleties of various prejudices to speak much of how well the book would hold up to modern standards of multicultural portrayal. Brent is writing about the rural, uneducated China of more than a hundred years ago, and doing so in the early seventies. The reader raised in the Christian-influenced West will be horrified by the Chinese practices of infanticide and cruel corporal punishment, but will also sympathize with Lucy against the English gentry's arrogant demeaning of the ways of the poor. Whether the English had any right to the "tiger's eyes" lost in a poverty-stricken country is probably a fair question, but "finders keepers" has been around for a while, and the wealthy, daring Englishman of more than a hundred years ago would almost certainly have presumed such a right.

As with most romances, historical or otherwise, the ending was unhesitatingly satisfactory. The book was a pleasant read overall, if hyper-dramatic in the fashion of old Gothic mysteries, and the heroine is particularly intriguing as she's both mentally independent and emotionally artless, untouched by feminism. Her story makes a good beach or sick-day companion, and the rest of the Brent novels seem likely to follow suit.

I've been looking for something like the wonderful, erudite writing of Mary Stewart for a long time. This kind of vintage suspense/thriller/mystery, with its rich evocation of a foreign clime (China) and its thoughtful discussion of English society, while quite closely adhering to the tropes of Gothic fiction, is nonetheless satisfyingly detailed, with fine character development. A gem! Adding to my shelf of wonderful British women writers from the 1950s and 60s.

A reader/friend recommended this to me. I had never heard of this author before and decided to give it a try.

I was pleasantly surprised! There were predictable moments, some outdated ways of viewing the world but overall it was a pleasant romp in a unique setting with a very PG romance happening at the same time.