The White Marriage — Charlotte Bingham

A wonderfully romantic and nostalgic novel set in the 1950s about the destruction of innocence.

Sunny's mundane country life is changed over night when handsome, stylish Gray's Bentley breaks down 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 does accept, even as Arietta is leaving Rushington to work in London.

Sunny soon joins Arietta at her cheerfully chaotic lodgings. It is here that she realizes 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, just as Arietta has fallen for his friend, jazz-playing painter, Sam. 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.