The Adventuress

By: Marion Chesney / Narrated By: Lindy Nettleton

Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins

Still not my favorite Beaton/Chesney series, but this is a solid and entertaining addition

I’ve totally been spoiled since I started my MC Beaton writing as Marion Chesney regency romance series with another one… which I won’t mention here… yet again… cuz that’s all I’ve been doing as I review each book in this, A House for the Season, series. Besides, my sister, the tech whiz, does all the links in the reviews, and tho’ she’s mightily patient with me chucking in mentions to other works and authors aplenty, why make her do it… yet again…?

Okay so, like, that makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy The Adventuress, which is not the case at all. It has a charming enough storyline: The Goodenoughs, Emily and her uncle, come to London for the Season and rent 67 Clarges Street in Mayfair cuz it comes god almighty cheap. But there’s something about Emily, something not right. She’s drop dead beautiful, but every now and again her language! Oh my! The gutter-speak that flies from her tongue is enough to stop London’s elite dead in their tracks.

As it turns out, early on we’re told the Goodenoughs (Not their original names) were once servants at an old estate, and Mr. Goodenough was left enough money so that they might legally change their identities and get Emily a husband from the gentry perhaps. Nobody is thinking of her landing a Lord or anything like that, so it’s ironic that the first eligible man she meets just happens to be Lord Fleetwood, a man with a scathing distaste for… servants. So while Emily begins falling for the man, falling for the idea of a title, she’s also pretty danged aware that, were Fleetwood to discover her true identity as an ex-chamber maid, he’d dump her in a hellfire heartbeat.

So there’s that.

But here we pick up with the lives of the servants again, and those are the stories that I like most. Rainbird is cunning and ever-protective… except when he’s not (Oh nooo! Poor Lizzie!); the dreams of getting and running a pub are ever closer since they’ve all saved up a dear amount of money; Joseph is still a complete and utter toad (No offense to toads); and Lizzie! Though I wanted to strangle her a couple of times for some stupid choices, I could see where she was coming from. And I really, really like how this series shows the Other Side of the regency romance. I mean, SOMEbody is emptying out the chamber pots, and dear Lizzie is ever so tired of scrubbing pots and sleeping on the cold floor. About the only character who remains vague is the statuesque Alice, but then again: Alice IS vague and slow and languorous in her movements tho’ not deft of mind.

Lindy Nettleton does her usual jolly decent job, and I must say that she really adds to the story as it develops and Emily gets more and more nervous. By the wedding, Nettleton is doing a verrrrry drunk Emily in a most amusing manner. And when Emily gets all twitchy because Nice Girls do NOT feel passion; Only Servants do? Nettleton pulls out all the stops and delivers piteous wails and weeping. Vastly entertaining.

Hmmm; so I guess I WILL wind up missing the servants at 67 Clarges Street as this is the fifth one, and we have but one more book to go.

Aww, drat it all! I went and ruined a good thing by liking the danged series, now didn’t I?!?