The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

Narrated by Rosalyn Landor

I was first introduced to Julia Quinn and The Bridgertons series in the mid-2000s, when I started my audiobook listening in earnest. My first book in the series was When He Was Wicked, narrated by Simon Prebble, and released in 2006. I was totally, helplessly in love – with Michael (of course – smitten heroes are my favorite!), with Julia Quinn’s writing, with Simon Prebble’s voice. I quickly moved on to the next audiobook, It’s In His Kiss (#7, Hyacinth’s book) where I made the rookie mistake of listening to a humorous audiobook while having dental work done. Advice: don’t do it! My dental tech was not as amused as I was. The last book in the series was subsequently released – On the Way to the Wedding – with Prebble narrating, and then: Crickets. I guess in that time period, while audiobooks were starting to rocket to success, recording previous releases just wasn’t done. Or maybe there were contractual challenges, like Diana Gabaldon faced with the distribution of the unabridged recordings in the Outlander series. (That time period is over, and the abridged versions of Outlander books no longer have precedence.)

Hallelujah! The Bridgertons are coming to audio! And although I truly loved Simon Prebble’s reading, and also James Langton’s narration of the second epilogues book, The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After, bringing in Rosalyn Landor to narrate The Duke and I is truly splendid. (Note: that was a purposeful use of the word Splendid, as Splendid, Dancing at Midnight, and Minx are also in the pipeline for release in December, narrated by Lucy Rayner.)

If you are a long-time romance reader, you surely have already at least heard of Julia Quinn and The Bridgertons series. Many of the titles remain on AAR’s Top 100 poll, time after time. I dare say you can’t consider yourself a fan of Historical Romance if you haven’t read at least one! Violet and Edmund Bridgerton had 8 children, each of whom is named in alphabetical order, starting with Anthony. However, Book One, The Duke and I, features Daphne Bridgerton as the first one to find her Happy Ever After, with Simon Bassett, Duke of Hastings.

Simon’s parents waited a very long time for an heir, and his mother died in childbirth. He had a very unhappy childhood – he didn’t speak at all for years, and then when he did, he had a crippling stutter. His father practically disowned him for being an idiot, and what little contact they had over the next several years was acrimonious to the extreme. When the old duke finally died, Simon was determined to never, ever do anything his father wanted. And that included begetting an heir to keep the dukedom in his father’s line. When he returned to England after many years abroad, he realized he would be constantly badgered by society mamas to marry, but he found he couldn’t just avoid the many parties and balls and musicales. His old friend from school, Anthony Bridgerton, gave him the inside view on that – and also warned him that his own mother, Violet Bridgerton, would be as bad as the rest. But when he was introduced to Anthony’s sister Daphne, currently on the Marriage Mart rounds, he found a friend. He and Daphne plotted a fake engagement that he knew would benefit them both – he could stay away from meddling mamas, and she would be instantly coveted by all the young bucks. These young men had only seen Daphne as a friend before, but seeing her take the Duke’s fancy made them all look at her in a new way! Suddenly they were sending flowers, reciting poetry and asking her to ride with them in Hyde Park.

The couple even let Anthony in on their secret, to keep him from strangling Simon for breaking Bro Code (yes, even in Regency England, one did not dally with one’s friends’ sisters). Not that it stopped Anthony from suspecting there was more to this than a sham – so when Anthony followed them into the garden one night, he caught them kissing, and so compromised, he challenged Simon to marry her or fight a duel.

Daphne, for her part, had a growing tendre for the handsome duke, and she was starting to think perhaps she could break Simon’s icy demeanor and fix his hard, cold heart. She forced Simon’s hand, as it were, that night in the garden – not to become compromised, but to get him to admit he was attracted to her. And now her brother would kill him! She knew Simon would not even try to protect himself. She rushed to the duel site and convinced Simon that she loved him, and he must, in fact, marry her to save his life. Simon confessed his innermost feelings to her: he could not have children. Unfortunately for both of them, Daphne didn’t really understand what this might mean – since she was woefully naive about how children were conceived, she assumed he had a fertility issue of some sort (that she wasn’t sure about). Still, she went forward with the wedding rather than have Anthony murder him for their garden encounter. Her mother’s embarrassed and amusing disclosure on the eve of her wedding did not illuminate the issue, and Daphne couldn’t bring herself to ask more questions.

Of course, Simon wasn’t infertile – or impotent – so they do consummate the marriage, albeit using the withdrawal method (now known not to be extremely effective…). It’s weeks before Daphne connects the dots, and when she does, it creates such an abyss between them that you cannot help but wonder how JQ will help them find their way.

This was a rather clinical retelling of their story, and really not worthy of the wonderful, witty, warm way JQ brings Simon and Daphne to Happy Ever After. Her storytelling and wordsmithing is so compelling and amusing, you feel you want to find out what happened, and then you want to subject yourself to it all over again by starting at the beginning! A note of caution for this edition, however: this audio includes the 2nd Epilogue. JQ wrote epilogues in every story, and then years later decided to add a 2nd epilogue for every story, to satisfy all her readers who loved the Bridgertons so much they needed to know how they were doing. The caution is, obviously the 2nd epilogues contain pretty major spoilers because they are about all the siblings and their spouses and children; therefore, you will know, once you’ve heard it, who married whom – the surprise of which one ended up with whom will be gone. For long time fans, this is no problem, but for those wanting to embark on the journey for the first time, you might want to stop the audio before she begins the 2nd epilogue!

I’m not sure there is anything for which we haven’t already praised Rosalyn Landor and her superb narrating skills. She has a wonderful and unique way of storytelling, using her own contralto range as narrator, and a different pitch, accent and demeanor for all the speaking characters. Her own narrator voice is never used as a character voice. Her enunciation is crisp and crystal clear, her pacing perfection personified, and her delivery supremely suited to all kinds of stories, including JQ’s sometimes silly, often amusing and moving prose. I love that she reads humor very matter-of-fact, underscoring the laughter. She also actually uses sounds appropriately – laughing or coughing or whispering during the prose. This is so much more effective than narrators who take it upon themselves to add sounds the author doesn’t write out, with out-of-place “heh heh”s ruining their delivery. My one issue is how she produces the lower register for males, using what sounds like a puff of air to push it out of her chest, almost as if they are puffing out their cheeks. To me, this makes the male characters all sound stuffy – not that upper crust peers weren’t often stuffy, but it isn’t always how I want to hear the hero’s voice, especially in intimate encounters, and the times I don’t feel the character is written as stuffy. In The Duke and I, Simon and Anthony are two of the stuffiest heroes out there anyway, so this wasn’t an obstacle for me.

I can only assume – not really rubbing elbows in audio biz circles – that something changed for Julia Quinn’s backlist to be coming to audio. This audiobook was published by Recorded Books, and the Blydon series is being released by Harper Audio. Recorded Books has the other 4 in The Bridgertons series scheduled over the next 14 months; however, they often have a much later release date for CDs than downloads (the CD release for this book is in November), so I don’t know if the release dates on their CDs is the same as or much later than the available date at download retailers like Audible, who does not have any of them listed yet. The Recorded Books lists the CD release dates as follows. Perhaps we shall see them 1-2 months earlier at Audible?

• The Viscount Who Loved Me, 23 February 2017
• An Offer from a Gentleman, 23 May 2017
• Romancing Mr Bridgerton, 23 August 2017
• To Sir Phillip, With Love, 23 November 2017

Melinda

Narration: A+

Book Content: A

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence Rating: None

Genre: Historical Romance

Publisher: Recorded Books