Her Royal Spyness
Series: Royal Spyness, Book 1
By: Rhys Bowen / Narrated By: Katherine Kellgren
Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
Oh, Ms. Kellgren! What a performance!
Lemme just say this about my mum (Using the Brit word as the story’s in 1932 England, doncha know!): She haaaaaaates ANY book narrated by Katherine Kellgren—too screechy, too histrionic. Wellll, Ms. Kellgren kinda sorta is all that, but it’s just that she throws herself into ALL the audiobooks she does with wild abandon.
The woman is fearless
And I happen to love her
That said? You miiiiiight just wanna check out the audio sample before you purchase, cuz I’ve discovered that she’s a Love Her or Hate Her voice actress. …or Was… she tragically died in 2018.
ANYway! Lady Georgiana, Georgie to her friends, is 34th in line to the throne and is flat broke. Her pitiable little allowance has been cut off by her brother’s frugal, when it comes to Georgie, wife. Binky, her brother, is pretty well broke too, and Georgie is left to her own devices to try to get food on the table, and she’s darned well sick of eating canned baked beans.
A stint as a shopgirl doesn’t turn out too well when she finds herself serving her flighty and flaky mother (Georgie is caught telling the well-heeled woman to LEAVE!!!), but soon she finds she has a knack for opening houses, airing them out and setting things to right before the wealthy come to inhabit them. Tho’ it’s not a knack so much as she’s DESperate and willing to do (Aaaaalmost) whatever it takes to keep body and soul together. This must, however, be a secret, as those in line to the throne must NOT be caught working.
Things are okaaaaay, for a while, until the dead body of a Frenchman is found in her brother’s bathtub. As the man had just turned up like a bad penny, showing proof that Georgie and Binky’s father lost the family home to him via gambling debts makes it all look reeeeally bad for Binky. Binky has flown the coop, leaving Georgie to pick up the pieces and to ferret out who all really did the egregiously-behaved man in.
Along the way, author Rhys Bowen cooks up some pretty fun characters with Belinda, Georgie’s old school chum who’s DEFinitely sexually liberated for the time, and the DEFinitely hyper-sexual Darcy O’Mara, a Lord if you will, who’s absolutely delightful as he tries to bed Georgie. Her Mum is a charmer, and Georgie’s less than royal Grandfather is truly wonderful.
As far as the plotting of the mystery goes? I’m getting good at this! I figured out Whodunnit with oooodles of time to spare, so I dunno how THAT will go down to the Mystery Aficionado who snubs red herrings and who reeeeeally likes their clues well-placed and cleverly disguised. Georgie, never a graceful young woman at the best of times, SUDdenly starts having accidents? People start dying around her? Didn’t take much to figure out she was the target (NOT a spoiler, she cottons on to it eVENtutally).
So I was feeling quite pleased with m’self, and I was soooo pleased with Katherine Kellgren. She made Georgie’s grandfather truly a marvelous character, and I even liked feckless layabout Binky. That she totally had each and every spoken R turned into a W for one of the characters, with nary a slip-up, was chortle-inducing. And that she could do the rakish Darcy with his wild Irish ways so charmingly made me wonder why Georgie wasn’t hopping into the sack posthaste! What’s the virginal girl waiting for?
Why, Love actually. Georgie will not be bedded until she’s sure she’s not just a conquest. But that doesn’t keep her from feeling pangs of jealousy when she considers the adventurous Belinda went to the same party the randy Darcy went to.
Add to all this a little spying on the side… Who IS the AWful American woman, Mrs. Simpson? And is the Prince infatuated with her? Really?!?
This was a charmer start to finish and whatever the flaws within the Mystery? Truly, the performance MORE than makes up for them. I’m so glad Audible every now and again does a whole: In A Series sale as I picked up the following two in the series. As they’re done by Ms. Kellgren to the 11th book, I’m suuuure I’ll be tickled… to death! by them all!
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