The White Marriage

Nov 29, 2025 6:02 PM

Author:Charlotte Bingham

The White Marriage

Fans of Louise Douglas and Dinah Jeffries will love this captivating novel about the destruction of innocence from million copy and Sunday Times bestselling author Charlotte Bingham.

'A galloping read... Bingham relishes her period detail and social comedy and adds an appealing touch of whimsy.' -- The Sunday Times

'Charming from start to finish' -- ***** Reader review

'Outstanding' -- ***** Reader review

'Unputdownable' -- ***** Reader review

'A must-read' -- ***** Reader review

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LOVE AND BETRAYAL IN AN AGE OF INNOCENCE

Sunny's mundane country life is changed overnight when handsome, stylish Gray breaks down in his Bentley outside her parents' cottage in Rushington. It seems that he may have fallen in love with her. Although Sunny herself remains unconvinced, her best friend Arietta believes that Sunny is soon to be set on the road to wealth and happiness.

Shortly after meeting Gray for the second time at a local ball, Sunny is invited out by his close friend, the beautiful socialite, Leandra Fortescue, who tells her over lunch that Gray wants to marry her if she will accept certain conditions...

Sunny accepts and soon joins Arietta at her cheerfully chaotic lodgings in London. It is here that she realises that she can find the sort of contentment that has eluded sophisticates such as Gray and Leandra. Here too she meets Hart and, despite being engaged to Gray, falls in love with him...

By chance Arietta comes into a secret about Gray, but is afraid to tell Sunny, and yet not to tell her might ruin her future.

Reviews

a galloping read... Bingham relishes her period detail and social comedy and adds an appealing touch of whimsy.

—— The Sunday Times

There aren't many book reviewers whose leaving one magazine to go to work for another would make the headlines. But then there aren't many book reviewers like James Wood

—— Sunday Telegraph

Luminous... full of top-notch observations from the coal-face

—— D.J. Taylor , Independent on Sunday

Enchanting... Witty, concise, and composed with a lovely lightness of touch

—— Economist

Exceptionally illuminating... brilliantly acute and enticingly widely read work. It should be compulsory reading for anyone in the reviewing trade and committed to memory before aspiring writers put pen to paper. For those who intend to pursue the underrated calling of reading fiction without wishing to add to its ranks, it will not only make reading more pleasurable, but articulate what you may have felt but never been able to express

—— Rosemary Goring , Herald

James Wood is Britain's lost literary critic. It's impossible to read this book and not want immediately to turn back to the authors he discusses...and read more of them, more closely, yourself. And very little literary criticism achieves that

—— Evening Standard

Intelligent, well-read and extremely confident

—— Guardian

Should find a place on every novel-lover's shelf. It has the quality all useful works of criticism should have: refined taste, keen observation, and the ability to make the reader argue, passionately, with it

—— John Sutherland , Financial Times

Fondly and delicately pieces back together what the deconstructors put asunder

—— Observer

Displaying a playful exuberance wonderfully at odds with the dry, jargon-strewn tradition of academic criticism, this deft, slender volume analyses how novelists pull rabbits out of hats

—— The Economist

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