Narrated by Nicholas Boulton
I said to my fellow AudioGals reviewers that as much as I adore Nicholas Boulton’s narrations, for some reason, if I haven’t listened to one for a while I kind of forget just how good they are. And so it happened here, with Besotted With the Viscount. As soon as I began listening, it’s like my ears sighed in happy joy and I immediately recalled why he is my favourite male historical romance narrator. Because he is just that good.
Besotted With the Viscount is kind of misnamed because if anything, it is Captain Lord Gideon Birch who is the one besotted. When he first spies Thea Ridley’s green eyes at a garden party he is deeply smitten and it only becomes a more deeply held attraction as he comes to know her.
Gideon has retired to the small village of Littleover after a decade-long career in the Navy. He received elevation to the peerage in recognition of his heroism in battle and a knee full of shrapnel as a legacy of service. He is sick of war and wants nothing more than a quiet life in the country with his Irish wolfhounds.
Thea Ridley is a young unmarried woman on the verge of abject poverty. Her parents have died and she has no-one apart from an elderly servant, Agatha, who is dying of some unnamed progressive disease, in combination with old age. Her hopes of a marriage were dashed when her beau married a young woman with a large dowry. She has no idea how she will support herself and Agatha in the coming months, let alone after that.
Gideon has a large collection of books, many of them in Greek, which he rescued during his career in the Navy. Thea is fluent in Greek, her father having been a Greek scholar, and Gideon offers her a temporary position as librarian/translator, cataloguing his collection. The salary he is offering will be enough to get her and Agatha through the winter – perhaps even longer if she’s careful. Gideon does need help with his library but it would be inaccurate to say he’s not also delighted to have an excuse to spend time with Thea.
I admit I had a little trouble imagining the library and all the books and why it would take so long to catalogue them and put them on shelves. Because after weeks and weeks and weeks, apparently barely a dent is made. I was seriously wondering just how big this library of Gideon’s was. Ultimately though, the books were the plot device to get the characters together so I didn’t worry about it too much beyond that.
The first two thirds/four fifths of the book is a very quiet, slow burn romance, with not a lot of action but I was there for it. However, the last section of the plot let the story down somewhat. Gideon and Thea both acted in ways that seemed foolish and out of character. There were elements of the Big Mis and some things were left undone which niggled at me, questions I had which were never sufficiently answered. The most pressing of those questions was: Why was marriage not a discussion they had much much earlier? I became a little impatient with Thea’s continued dismissals of Gideon’s declarations of love and I wish that she had, on the page, told him about her previous relationship with John.
I would have been delighted with some more open discussions between Thea and Gideon and a little more trust – on both their parts. And I wanted Gideon to be more heroic when the opportunity arose than he chose to be. I would have been very happy with a low-conflict journey to HEA; the last part of the story felt like stirring things up just to create a drama rather than being organic to the book.
I expect my content grade is nonetheless influenced, at least a little, by the superb narration by Nicholas Boulton. He alone could make a bad book listenable. And Besotted With the Viscount was by no means bad – a lot of it was quite lovely actually. But I did become frustrated and impatient near the end and there may have been a bit of eyerolling as well.
Even so, the narration was so good, the book was a joy to listen to. Mr. Boulton imbues the characters with that extra something listeners get from the very best narrators. The intonations and emphasis he used eloquently revealed the subtext about Gideon’s battle fatigue and loneliness and Thea’s fear and isolation. His accents are brilliant, his character differentiation excellent.
Even though the content didn’t, in the end, quite live up to the wonder of the narration, it was still an enjoyable listen. Particularly the earlier sections of the book are quite charming.
Kaetrin
Buy Besotted with the Viscount by Susanna Malcolm on Amazon
