The White Marriage
Sunny Chantry is on the verge of adulthood when she crosses paths with the handsome and glamorous socialite, Gray Wyndham. His proposal of marriage, a white marriage at that, takes her by surprise but, for various reasons, she agrees to a twelve-month engagement. Little does she know that he is using her as a means to an end.
Meanwhile, her childhood friend Arietta goes to London to work and once there discovers Gray’s secret. Sunny soon decides to join Arietta in London and complicates everything by falling in with a young musician named Hart in spite of her prior engagement.
The White Marriage is a coming of age story set against the backdrop of the postwar years when society was undergoing great changes and the era of the ‘teenager’ was about to begin. Sunny is a terribly naïve heroine and almost unbearably jolly and bouncy. This could so easily cross the line into parody, but Charlotte Bingham cleverly avoids this sin by keeping her character grounded and funny in equal measures.
A light-hearted read that pulls no great punches but is none the worse for it.
