Back in Society

By: Marion Chesney/ Narrated By: Davina Porter

Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins

Not the most engaging of heroines, but the poor relations more than make up for that!

Back in Society begins right after the sort of cliffhanger ending of Book 5, whereby the young Lady Jane checks into the hotel, planning on offing herself before month’s end. We’re all left agog because, at the end of the novel, Sir Philip has rather smugly pointed out how another hotel’s business tanked after a suicide was carried out, leaving prospective guests shuddering and scrambling out of superstitious fears.

Oh no! What will our dear friends at the Poor Relation do?

Naturally, they have a plan. They foil Jane’s attempt and enlist the help of a former poor relation, Harriett from Book 1, to house Jane and bring her out into Society. Harriett is newly bereaved, her young daughter died, and she and her husband the Duke have become estranged through their separate grief.

And that’s kinda where my problem with this, the very last book in the series, is. Harriett is rather downcast, and heck! Jane is suicidally depressed… And that doesn’t make for very vibrant characters. Especially when our Hero, the French Comte comes into the picture and falls hopelessly in love. It doesn’t make sense that he’s so smitten when Jane is such a drudge who only believes the worst of him—that he’s a shameless rake and is simply toying with her. I mean, Ms. Beaton does a good job in showing just how bad Jane’s life has been to make her so beaten down, but I rather missed the Hero/heroine setup of Book 5, where the Captain found it all too frustrating that Frederica was as spirited as she was beautiful. Here, we have the Comte all frustrated because Jane is as spiritless as she is beautiful.

So, >yawn<.

Naturally, what saves the book is that the hilarious poor relations bring both Harriett and Jane back to a sense of life and of hope. So, >phew<. Plus, the book wraps up things for each of our beloved hoteliers, and while some ghosts from earlier books come back… to bite Sir Philip in the…, even more wonderful unions are brought back to celebrate joyful and happy endings. Even that curmudgeon, the aforementioned tortoise-faced Sir Philip, bereft of his companions, finds reasons to kick up his heels at the very end with a delightful twist that I didn’t for the life of me see coming.

I must admit that, this go-round, I have to ding Davina Porter a tad as she’s not her usual complete and utter perfection. Many times she switches up voices so that say, Sir Philip winds up sounding as sane and elegant as Colonel Sandhurst, or even sounding as bold and suave as the Hero. -BUT- I give Ms. Porter everything back for the fact that she was given a French Hero with a Scottish sub-hero as a best friend, and she manages both accents so well that their dialogue flows sooo smoothly.

All in all, while it was a bit predictable, it was so very satisfying as the end was all I’ve ever come to wish for the poor relations. Huzzah!

But now what the heck am I supposed to do?

…Hmm… Anyone up for M.C. Beaton’s Traveling Matchmaker series…?!!