Arabella
By: Georgette Heyer / Narrated By: Phyllida Nash
Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
Wow! Thought The Corinthian was the best until…
While I generally think Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances are the best of the genre, I have to admit: sometimes she’s hit or miss. I’d listened to The Corinthian and thought it was her best until I listened to Arabella for the audiobook club my sister, my mom, and I have going.
Oh such fun! Such wonder!
Beaumaris is a confirmed bachelor, bored with his status as the best match in London. He’s used to matchmaking mamas and their daughters throwing themselves at his feet. So when poor Arabella’s carriage breaks down outside his establishment, he thinks it’s just another ploy and he views its occupants with scorn and suspicion. This, the sometimes impulsive Arabella, cannot be viewed kindly. She makes up a story of being a bachelorette, bored with her status as the best catch from her part of the country. While Beaumaris comes to believe she’s fibbing, he lets his friend continue to believe it, lets his friend spread the news across London. And that’s where the fun starts.
Arabella is the hit of the season, but she can’t accept anybody lest they learn the truth of her rather impoverished background. But through it all, her better, kinder, more compassionate nature always shines through. Whether she’s saving climbing boys from their evil fates, saving mongrel dogs from being tortured by young boys; she’s always who she is. And this, Beaumaris finds, is lovely.
But how can Arabella, who enjoys her hilarious bantering with the ever-clever Beaumaris, come clean? How can she, who has fallen for the dyed-in-the-wool rake, ever let him know who she really is? Enter her brother, enter a dog begrudgingly yet increasingly lovingly called Ulysses, enter a good hearted woman called Leaky Pegg. The book is filled with one-of-a-kind characters, endless amusing brouhahas, clever dialogue galore.
Phyllida Nash is the best of Heyer’s narrators, and here she carries off each character, each situation with the fun, the gravity, it deserves.
You’ll love Arabella as she tries to save the world while still trying to make a match that would help her family. You’ll love Beaumaris. And you’ll adore Ulysses.
All I can say? Well… >happy sigh< …
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