Marianne

Series: Miss Wolfraston's Ladies, Book 1

By: Jenny Hambly / Narrated By: Helen Taylor

Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins

Might be a tad This Has Been Done Before-ish, but sweet overall. …and… HELEN TAYLOR!!!

Jenny Hambly is a new author for me, but going with mixed-bags o’ genres of Listening to Now each week had me desperate for m’ usual much-adored Romances… but HOPEfully different. So a new-to-me author? THERE!

Helen Taylor as Narrator Extraordinaire?! Oh my soooo THERE!!!

Our story opens with the young ladies who are to make up the entirety of this series: Miss Wolfraston’s Ladies. There’s the timid Charlotte, who’s been stuck at the School for eeeeeons with nary a soul to visit on holidays. There’s the chic and elegant and somewhat aloof Georgianna.

And there’s our heroine for this, Marianne herself. All three are sitting together doing their Ladylike things and pondering the upcoming holiday. Charlotte makes bashful protestations about NOT feeling lonely and neglected when she obviously most certainly is. Georgianna makes a cutting barb about how she should Just Get Over Her Shyness. And Marianne comes to the rescue with her own rather cutting barb… but she says it with a mischievous glint in her eye and in cheerful good humor.

Thus we come to see their personalities in little nutshells and through conversation, and this is what I came to appreciate about Ms. Hambly’s writing and in her story crafting. It isn’t In Your Face Lemme Tell Ya exACTly who they are; rather, Hambly’s writing is low-key and understated. And that’s ALWAYS a relief.

Expect noooo toe-curlingly embarrassing scenes of steaminess, noooo! M’ toes stayed straight and true for the entirety of the story. Thanks be to GOSH and to Hambly!

Unexpected invitations are received with Charlotte’s long lost family taking her off to ready her for her Come-Out. And Marianne’s sliiiiiightly nutty aunt invites her to bring a friend and come for a long visit in Cheltenham where auntie shall be Taking The Waters. As Georgianna has thawed, and as we learn that her own familial circumstances kinda sorta blow big time, what with mummy being threatened by Georgianna’s stately beauty, and what with mummy trying to marry her off, like, posthaste to a wretchedly much older man, we see that Marianne and Georgianna will find their way into an easy friendship. Their contentment seems assured, so auntie wrangles and finagles an invite that mummy will find acceptable; Georgianna can indeed go.

Enter our Hero, Lord Cranbourne who has a bit of a chip on his shoulder after his proposal of marriage to The Love Of His Life is snubbed (He’s only a second son, so seriously? How could she possibly accept?!), but whose circumstances took a turn with the sudden and tragic deaths of his father and older brother. He’s crotchety, and he’s sullen. And we soon find, as the story progresses, that he’s a man of great honor and depth.

But you see, Marianne is of a lively temperament, her manners are open, like, waaaay toooo open, and she gets into scrapes and says things she really shouldn’t. She gets chastised by her auntie Fanny LOTS, and many are the missteps she makes with Cranbourne, who can indeed fly off half-cocked and grouchy-like. Not very attractive, but there you go.

A sheep thrown down a well (Nope, no Baaaaaaaah! as the thing was unceremoniously chucked into the depths whenst already very much dead) is tossed into the story causing this reviewer’s right eyebrow to cock most mightily as it seemed a truly odd thing to write in a story that was going quite swimmingly. But other than that, Marianne is a sweet little ditty about young ladies learning lessons as they grow into definite Marriage Fodder soon to dance at Almacks and sip the tepid punch/lemonade there.

No mighty huzzahs, and certainly not Georgette Heyer, but this is charming when all is said and done. And dude! Helen Taylor is our narrator, and never was there a more glorious voice for Regencies! Yeh Yeh Yeh, Taylor does supernatural Hero with the best of them (The Hollows); and she’s an excellent Sexy Young Woman with Mad Skills (Touchfeather); -BUT- may I posit that Alicia Cameron’s glorious stories would suffer most terribly without Taylor, that Rachel Anderson’s “Tanglewood” series would NOT have been so much fun… without Taylor, and gonna just go all-out and add: the BEST Elizabeth Cadell audiobooks are the ones done by… Taylor! The woman does just as well here, and I’m very much looking forward to the rest in the series, as her vocal stylings, her character choices, were so enjoyable!

This week of Listening for me started with an almighty THUD (So sorry, A Demon-Haunted Land!), so it was truly a relief to find myself delighted and engaged in a simple story of young ladies getting into scrapes, one with true to the era writing, and one that had some sweetly sparkling dialogue that teaches our Headed-To-Their-First-Season gals some not toooo terribly hard-earned lessons.

Charming! A pleasant 6 1/2-hours. And?

Y’all KNOW how I dearly love to stumble ‘pon a new Regency series!!! Huzzah….!