Galvanism and Ghouls
Series: Manners and Monsters, Book 2
By: Tilly Wallace / Narrated By: Marian Hussey
Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
Yesssss! The First in the Series WAS just a setup for BETTER to come, like, with THIS one! Huzzah!
Galvanism and Ghouls was soooo what I was hoping for! So much so that I can wait on waxing poetic about Marian Hussey’s narration and can dive right into the story.
The surly and brooding and somewhat (Totally!) pugnacious Viscount Wycliff is living in the Miles country estate with the Miles family. THIS, heroine Hannah Miles canNOT stand as the two baaaarely get along. She thinks he skulks (He does), and he thinks she gives The Afflicted (Remember? Those who were trapped in a French plot that leaves a goodly number of the English, particularly those of the ton, somewhat Undead and having to eat a morsel or two of brain?) too much consideration (She does). What WAS Hannah’s Undead mum thinking when she invited him to stay?
Things are off with a bang when a Monster turns up right around the time that corpses do as well. The problem with the corpses, as tho’ they’re not bad enough, is that their appendages are all stitched together body parts of other dead people. And the thing about it all is that ‘twould appear SOMEone is trying to reanimate the dead.
Now, WHO would do such a thing? Unfortunately, it’s well known all over the place that Hannah’s dad Hugh Miles is juuuuust such a person. Who knows what-all Dr. Miles gets into whenst he’s in his backroom with his autopsies and trying to find SOMEthing to cure his ailing wife. Everyone KNOWS he’ll do ANYthing for her!
To make matters worse, it turns out that the information leading to the arrest of Hannah’s much-loved dad came directly from Viscount Wycliff. Oooooh, Hannah is plenty peeved, and rightly so thinks Wycliff. The two must join forces once again to find the culprit, tho’ Hannah would just as soon as pummel Wycliff as not.
In this second book, however, author Tilly Wallace takes muuuuuch more time in sloooowly developing the characters. Basically, I canNOT stand the Enemies to Lovers trope unless it does indeed go this slowly, methodically unspooling admirable traits even as the characters wish to jam needles into eyes and such-all. Yeh yeh yeh, Hannah starts noticing that the Viscount has a comforting woodsy-kinda scent, and yeh yeh yeh Wycliff discovers that Hannah has depth to her character and isn’t ANYthing like the shallow, vapid debutantes he’s used to snubbing. But Wallace makes the (SLOWLY!) thawing of enmity between the two pleasant. One realizes that, through the development of the plot, there really ARE going to be some even better books to come!
Add Marian Hussey’s absolutely marvelous narration, and yesssss! I can say that, unlike the first book, here I truly understood WHY I liked the story. No seriously, I said it earlier and I’ll add it here just in case I neeeeed to say it again: Oh how eeeeasily her narration flows as she effortlessly carries accents, tones, pacing, you name it. I’m so looking forward to other audiobooks in m’ Library where she’s at the helm.
As with any good series, this installment ends with just the right amount of gossamer threads that make a person twitchy to get on with the next. I see that Halloween was when I did m’ first in the series, but I gotta tell ya: I’m totally going to be hitting the next way before another year goes by.
Light on the mystery (Me, I figured it out early on… huzzah for meeee!) but heavy on the character development. Plenty of galvanism but light on the ghouls. More story than romance, but I very much see a truly satisfying way for that to go forward.
And gosh! There are six in the series as I write this. Oh dude, that’s plenty of time for much-liked characters to get all twittery about each other.
Nope, not gonna wait for an entire year; I've a feeling I’ll find an excuse, any old excuse to spend some more time with Hannah and Wycliff. Secrets spilled make for comPULsory listening!!!
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