Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas

Narrated by Mary Jane Wells

I had my first Lisa Kleypas historical success last year with Cold-Hearted Rake. Admittedly, it was from a very small sample – I had only tried two other historicals by Kleypas before then but had been underwhelmed by them. It was also my first experience of listening to Mary Jane Wells’ narration and it was such a joy I called dibs on Marrying Winterborne as soon as I knew the release date.

While I think it’s possible to enjoy Marrying Winterborne as a stand-alone romance, I do recommend listening to Cold-Hearted Rake first. The romance between Lady Helen Ravenel and department store magnate Rhys Winterborne begins in that book and the history therein adds important backstory to their romance.

Marrying Winterborne picks up immediately after where Cold-Hearted Rake left off; (spoiler alert) Kathleen had taken it upon herself to break Helen’s and Rhys’s engagement on Helen’s behalf – Rhys was hurt and angry and Helen was, to say the least, greatly dismayed. Helen, despite her innate shyness, decides to go after what she wants and, when Kathleen and Devon are away getting married, she visits Rhys at his store, alone (the scandal!). After some understandable missteps in conversation, Helen makes it clear that she does want to marry Rhys and he believes her. However, having been burned once, he wants to make sure of the eventual outcome and thus delivers an ultimatum along the lines of: give up your maidenhead to me today so that you are thoroughly compromised and have to go through with the wedding and the engagement is back on.

Of course, this is a fairly dastardly ultimatum to give, but, frankly, I took it as little more than an excuse to get to the banging already. Also, it meant that, provided there was opportunity, there was little stopping Rhys and Helen having other intimate encounters before the wedding. That being so, I was all for it.

Information Helen discovers about her family and which links to Rhys puts a spanner in the works – but this doesn’t occur until after the halfway mark of the story so I won’t say much more about it. While it wasn’t exactly a Big Misunderstanding or Secret Baby, Keeping A Secret is generally not among my favourite romance tropes. However here, I did understand what Helen was doing and why and, overall, I didn’t think it was unduly drawn out. What kept the book from being an A (for content) was that there was nothing by way of information as to what consequences Helen and Rhys suffered from a social perspective after the truth was out. I felt this was a glaring omission.

Other than that, the story was a delight; better than Cold-Hearted Rake, wonderfully romantic, with characters I enjoyed spending time with. As was the case in the earlier book, Helen’s younger sisters, twins, Pandora and Cassandra cracked me up.

What made the twins even more delightful, I’m sure, was the way Mary Jane Wells depicted them on audio. (Also, it’s so refreshing to hear two 19-year-old girls behaving like teenagers rather than mature adults – I don’t see/hear a lot of it in historical romance.) But it wasn’t just the characterisation given to the twins which caused me to race through this audio with sheer joy. Ms. Wells does a wonderful Welsh accent and believably deepens her voice (partly this is done by a sterner tone but there is a noticeable change in timbre as well) for Rhys (and the other male characters).

Lady Berwick’s toffy and matronly tones were also brilliantly done and I loved the way Ms. Wells was able to differentiate between the other female cast members. I never had any trouble working out who was speaking; from the uxorious Albion Vance, to the propriety-driven Kathleen, to shy-but-coming-into-her-own-power Helen. I could hear the differences in character, by tone, cadence and affect and it was superb.

I had such fun listening to this Marrying Winterborne. I foresee this is one I will go back to again because listening to Rhys completely lose his well-protected heart to Helen was simply gorgeous.

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Kaetrin

AUDIOBOOK INFORMATION

TITLE: Marrying Winterborne

AUTHOR: Lisa Kleypas

NARRATED BY: Mary Jane Wells

GENRE: Historical Romance

STEAM FACTOR: Glad I had my earbuds in

REVIEWER: Kaetrin [button type=’link’ link=’http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01COR30IA/?tag=audiogalsnet-20′ size=’btn-lg’ variation=’btn-default’ target=’blank’]Buy Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas on Amazon[/button] [section label=’Excerpt’ anchor=’Excerpt’]EXCERPT: