Ten Thousand Stitches
Series: Regency Faerie Tales, Book 2
By: Olivia Atwater / Narrated By: Rafe Beckley
Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
A truly excellent 2nd installment—Run, run to Chirpbooks to get this raucous yet gentle ride of a tale!
After finishing, and loving, Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, I was most disheartened to know there was a 2nd tale, but alas! not in audiobook form.
Or so I thought… My sister enlightened me by directing me to Chirpbooks where I find some of the most aMAzing audiobook deals. Nope, Ten Thousand Stitches was NOT part of their continual parade of Limited Deals, but glory gosh, did I mention that I LOVED Half a Soul? Friend, I bought it full-price, something I NEVER do.
Let’s start with Rafe Beckley and what a surprise I had when I started the audiobook: Usually my normal listening speed is around x1.5. Or if the narration’s spot-on, I listen at x1.2 speed just cuz I’m perverse like that, refuuuuusing to be normal. Here?
x1 speed and really really REALLY savored every bit of wonderful faerie/regency genre-bender enhanced by perFECtion in narration. There are a multitude of characters here, and criminy! there are sooo many emotions felt by all, and good golly gosh, there are dramatic mishaps galore. And Mr. Beckley? Handled Atwater’s writing with ease and such warmth that, no, this one didn’t make me cry, but boy it made me feel.
A casual kinda sorta kindness to housemaid Euphemia Reeves has her falling terribly in love with Benedict Ashbrooke; after all, usually Lords and Ladies don’t even “see” the struggling servants let alone consider how their behavior causes more work and distress to those who have to clean up after them. And Effie feels so very much how just a piece of wallpaper she is: Destined to remain a servant, wanting to be seen, DESperately frustrated and angry.
The story opens with that small act of kindness expressed before a ball given by Lord and Lady Culver and continues to the ball itself. Effie thiiiiiinks Benedict has seen her, is all adither, then realizes, no, never for her such gaiety and interest.
WHAM! Enter Lord Blackthorn straight from the world of Faerie. And tho’ Effie knows never to trust the Fae, danged if she can’t help but enter into a bargain with him: He’ll help her wed Benedict and in exchange she’ll embroider on his jacket, a stitch to fill the 100 days of assistance he’ll give her. If she can’t get Benedict to marry her in that timeframe, she’s to become Blackthorn’s servant forever and ever and ever. Effie, looking at how desperately unfortunate her life is, readily agrees to the deal.
And so begins the use of glamour to pose as a Lady, many many schemes but even MORE chaotic results, usually due to Blackthorn’s taking spoken words way too literally, or by trying to address wrongs and slights. Effie’s friend Lydia, who’s been glamoured to appear to be a worthy chaperone, makes a scathing remark, and what does Blackthorn do but go and make Lady Culver bray like a donkey? HiLARious, yes, but the Lady’s wrath is such that all the servants suffer for it, enough so that she throws a teapot at Lydia the next day.
What’s practically unbearably lovely, this humanizing of the servant class (As opposed to, say, Longbourn by Jo Baker which was well-done but made me wanna slash m’ wrists), reeeeally shines through. I love myself a good Regency romance, but every now and then I DO think of who all is up at the crack of down to take care of the fires in the rooms, to empty the chamber pots, to get paid a pittance, and MOSTLY to be sooo subservient, so at the beck and call of Lords and Ladies, sooo at the mercy of their moods. Ten Thousand Stitches has all of those emotions, the very real anger which can destroy or which can focus and motivate.
Less Regency and more Faerie Tale, the otherworldly Lord Blackthorn is truly a delight, or that is: He delights in everything and does so wish to do right by Effie. Is he the Hero of the story, or will Euphemia get her dearest wish as Benedict finally notices her? Or p’raps another gentleman falls for her glamour-self?
Filled with friendship and loyalty, with slights and outrage, filled with the search for simple human dignity, and dude! filled with the inCREDible narration by Beckley?
Regency Faerie Tale #3 has just been released. Not seeing it on Audible; not seeing it on Chirp. Will I have to wait? Will I have to have Hope just as Effie and Lydia do?
Fingers sooo crossed, my friend…!
