It's Patricia Rice. You want to read a romance? Some magic mixed in it? Descendants from the very big Malcolm family? Here you have it.
Lady Phoebe Malcolm Duncan talks to animals and wants to be a veterinarian, which is kind of difficult in England in the 19th century. Women are not allowed in the university. Then the walls of her home come tumbling down, literally, and she has to get a job as a governess for the nieces and nephew of Andrew Blair who is an inventor and owns the building where Phoebe lived. Guess who come together.
Disclaimer: I got this book in the Librarything Early Reviewers. ( )

Nice example of Patricia Rice's Malcolm books. Phoebe is gifted, of course (she can speak to and understand animals), and aristocratic (when she wants to be), but not rich. Andrew is a boy from the wrong side of town, who is also a gifted inventor and has climbed by his own abilities to...well, solid middle class, with eccentricities. His cousin's children are with him because of a threat to them - their mother was killed, possibly intentionally. The children are also gifted (the boy can levitate things, the twin girls can see spirits, including their mother's ghost), and in some desperation Andrew asks for help from the School of Malcolms and gets Phoebe. The side-plot about her home collapsing, in a building owned by Andrew and a consortium who planned to tear it down and build new places anyway, gets exceedingly convoluted - it takes them 3/4ths of the book to each realize the other's connection to the place. The overwhelming lust drawing them together...is as boring as it usually is in romances; here, though, it's an important factor but not the only reason they want to be together. Andrew's proposal, and temporary ring, are a lovely example of that. The major storyline is the threat to the children - who, and why, and what to do about it. It's not solved, by the end of this book - I suspect The Association are going to be the Big Bad throughout this series - but the immediate problem is dealt with, on several levels. Fun read, not totally fluffy. I'm interested in reading the next book (and probably the whole series, eventually). ( )

This was good enough to read, but not to reread.

Rice leans heavily on a number of not terribly original ideas-- the employer-governess romance, the feminist way ahead of her time, the "we have problems with each other, no, we are attracted and let's get married!" thing. Still, I would read more Rice novels as library books, even though I wouldn't buy them based on this as a sample. ( )

Lessons in Enchantment by Patricia Rice was quite entertaining. The protagonists were likable characters. The gratuitous sex scene in the attic was unnecessary to the story, so I marked it down for that. I wish there had been more about the animals. The antagonists were plausible, but not very well fleshed out. I might even read the next in the series. ( )

Lessons in Enchantment is a solid Patricia Rice book. I generally enjoy her writing style and this is no exception. Building on the stories of the Malcom family from her previous series I loved that the location felt like a character of it's own. The combination of magic and history kept me engaged throughout the book.