Emily Goes to Exeter
Series: The Traveling Matchmaker, Book 1
By: M. C. Beaton / Narrated By: Helen Lisanti
Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
Oh huzzah! Gotta love Hannah Pym!
It’s been since, like, forEVER that I last listened to The Traveling Matchmaker series by MC Beaton, writing as Marion Chesney. I totally forgot about pretty much everything and, whereas I’d always remembered Emily Goes to Exeter as the weakest in the 6-book series, I was pleasantly surprised with how delighted I was by Miss Hannah Pym, our ex-Housekeeper turned stagecoach traveler who just happens to involve herself in everyone’s business.
She doesn’t do it in an obnoxious or overbearing way; rather, she’s simply interested in the lives of her fellow travelers, and it turns out that she pretty much knows what’s best for each of them… okay, so maybe a taaaad overbearing…
Miss Hannah Pym is a 45-year old spinster who’s always dreamed of travel and adventure, even as she was working her way up from child scullery maid all the way to Housekeeper. Her master, a sullen recluse, has just died, and he’s generously left her 5,000 pounds. Huzzah, she needn’t work again, AND she can finally take one of the new Flying Machines (As stagecoaches were originally called) to travel, maybe not the world, but certainly England. With some help from her late employer’s brother, the debonair Sir George Clarence who has white hair and striking blue eyes, she’s off to Exeter.
On this journey, there are many characters and there are more than one match to be made. The second involves a widow and a poor lawyer, and it’s through this entanglement that Hannah and our heroine, Emily, become involved in a murderous plot. Mostly, however, the story revolves around the young and beautiful and verrrry spoiled Emily as our heroine, and the rakish and handsome Lord Ranger Harley. Emily ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage to him, but as soon as Harley sees how spoiled and missish Emily is, he wants nothing to do with her in turn.
It’s up to Hannah, who thinks there’s an attraction between the two and who thinks they’d suit very well, and it’s up to a snowstorm that keeps all the travelers snowbound at an inn, to bring the two together through hard work and even some light play.
The story is light, fluffy, and chockfull of historical tidbits about the Regency era. While the A House for the Season series gave us insight into the lives of servants during the era, and The Poor Relation series gave us insight into the lives of the genteel impoverished, here we get insight into the classes and how they traveled throughout England. The Flying Machines could boast serving all the classes, even if the upper classes loudly proclaimed them to be awful (It was totally cheaper to go by stage than through hiring a carriage, and men to protect against highwaymen, etc.). And as with all, or most of, her books, Beaton/Chesney shows us about beauty practices, about hygiene practices which is a delight as NObody bathed during that time. I like facts like that being part of the story.
Helen Lisanti isn’t the best narrator of heroines, making them all sound so incredibly young and vapid, and her voices for Heroes can make them come off sounding all gruff and imperious. But here, Emily is young and a trifle vapid, and Lord Harley is indeed gruff and definitely imperious, so okay okay. But where she shines is as Hannah Pym. She breathes even more life into an already vivacious older woman, and we can almost see Hannah’s eyes dancing and changing colors as she flits from mood to mood. Through Lisanti’s narration, we come to know Hannah and her foibles and beliefs, her temper and her enthusiasms.
What an absolute delight this all was, so even if, yes, it is the weakest in the series, it was still better-natured than the A House for the Season books where life was sooo hard for the servants, and where the footman Joseph was really a disagreeable character.
I’m oh so happily looking forward to the next in the series, and as Hannah couldn’t wait to get back to tell Sir George of her many adventures, I myself can’t wait to get back to Audiobook Accomplice to let you know how it all goes!
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