Half a Soul
Series: Regency Faerie Tales, Book 1
By: Olivia Atwater / Narrated By: Rafe Beckley
Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
LOVED it, and good heavens: Hankie Time every now and again…?
My husband had already shoved a second tissue into my hand as I’d just finished with Before the Coffee Gets Cold, and thus had tissues at the ready whenst I’d settled in to listen to Half a Soul. I’m going to add that over on Amazon reviews of this story, one of them dings the book for having a plethora of historical inaccuracies and for having some American-isms that would NOT be part and parcel of Regency language. So there’s that, and at this point, having listened to a good many Regencies and to a biography of the Prince Regent himself? Well, one would think that I’d know what-all was well and proper for the era. Alas, I’m going to bow to my fellow reviewer who was able to state when various Acts were established… which would soooo not be within my wheelhouse.
Okay, THAT aside, if you suspend your disbelief, if you’re looking for a proper mash-up/bit o’ genre-bending, I think you’ll be greatly delighted with this blend of dark fantasy and Regency… with a grand serving of Soul and Heart. This goes beYONd tickling the funny bone with the clever repartee, our heroine Dora being incapable of having her feathers ruffled and is thus able to answer some scathing remarks with witty observations, and it in fact touches one’s soul.
What we have: As a child, a dark Faerie came for Theodora (Dora) to take her soul. He had her in a stranglehold, but Dora’s dear cousin Vanessa rammed the evil toad with a pair of scissors, breaking his grasp and allowing the two to run away. No, the toad (No offense to toads!) did NOT take her soul, but he DID take half of it. And from then on, Dora with two different colored eyes (The color was drained from half the pair), has been such a trial to her Aunt. Now, as she’s becoming a spinster who definitely says all the wrong things, who is unable to feel embarrassment, who just canNOT adhere to the rigid rules of Society as the terror of breaking rules doesn’t resonate with her, she’s decided that she will NOT be a trial any longer and will do all she can so as not to ruin Vanessa’s chances for a good match during the London Season.
One day as she’s on her own and unchaperoned (She didn’t realize that it’s simply not done!), she wanders into a bookshop and encounters a kind man… and a not so kind man who just happens to be the Lord Sorcier of England and who happens to haaaaate Society and people in general. Dora doesn’t know to be offended by the wretched things he quips about her but rankles him by quipping right back.
And so we have our Hero.
The two are thrown together as Vanessa has piqued his interest by spilling the beans about Dora’s misfortune, and he undertakes to help her retrieve the other half of her soul. But in the meantime, Dora is chucked into the good works of another (He who happens to be Elias’s best friend), and she’s forever altered by the suffering she encounters on their trips to the Workhouses where friend doctor treats the grievously ill and wounded. There’s some really gritty writing about the conditions that I appreciated as the stench is able to penetrate Dora’s detached haze, and we start to see her coming to plumb her depths to try to figure out just what-all is stirring within herself. A tiny girl fairly comatose from a sleeping plague is found, filthy, frail, and with matted hair, and as the waif is removed so that Elias can treat her, Dora finds herself naming the girl Jane. Her broken soul has been touched, those faint tail-ends of emotion that she sometimes catches are coming closer to her, filling her.
There’s plenty of romance, and at first I thought it was going to be along the lines of: Enemies Become Lovers sorta. But this was more of two characters coming into their own and meeting each other in a fuzzy middle they both could inhabit. Elias has such rage issues, and during one scene he finally breaks down and hurls the most damnable things at both guests at a dinner… and at his own best friend. That Dora could be moved but not shattered is due to her lacking that part which would recoil in horror. But it’s written so that very lack is touched and filled some more. Tissue one which was soon followed by tissue two at the denouement where Dora makes the hard choices, the necessary choices, the choices that prove half a soul certainly does NOT mean half a heart.
At first I thought Rafe Beckley was going to be a simple charmer of a narrator as he approached his speaking style as tho’ reading a faerie tale aloud to an ooohing and aaaaahing audience. But then his tones warmed for the heated and tortured Elias, and his whimsical side started suiting Dora’s quippy remarks quite well. Add to that fairly decent pacing (at my new usual listening speed of x1.5) when all hits the fan SEVeral times, and I was delighted. I was a bit worried earlier when I’d been scrolling my Library to find that (Favorite author) Alicia Cameron had one of her stories narrated by a >gasp< MAN, but now I see that it’s Rafe Beckley, and not only am I NOT wary, but I’m looking forward to it. I do hope the somewhat reserved tones were used only for Dora and her situation and are not indicative of the way he’ll do all heroines, but if his voice for Vanessa is anything to go by, he’s capable of warmth and ladylike exclamations and declarations. Huzzah for that!
This isn’t quite the emotional wrench that say An Angel for the Earl was, but I have to admit that it wasn’t just one situation here, one encounter that left me with a lump in my throat and a tear or two (Or three) skittering down my cheeks. There were several times the character development had me applauding, all teary-eyed, and it immediately had me looking up the next in author Olivia Atwater’s series: Regency Faerie Tales. Alas, Book 2 is not out on audiobook as of yet (DESperately hoping it will indeed come out eventually!), but it has a chuckle-inducing premise as well. With a Book 3 out in October 2021?
Oh good golly gosh, I’m soooo hoping for great things to come!
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