The Chaperon

Series: Sisters of Woodside Mysteries, Book 2

By: Mary Kingswood / Narrated By: Joanna Stephens

Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins

More Gothic than Regency but still enjoyable

I was really worried going into The Chaperon as it follows sister Lucy on this journey of the newly-impoverished Winterton sisters as they now traverse life as the genteel employed. Lucy, I felt, given what we learned of her in Book 1, The Governess, was an overly emotional and hyper bombastic chatterbox, and when Joanna Stephens narrated her in that first book, she was screechy and all over the place. Would I be able to handle an enTIRE audiobook of her tongue flapping about nonstop?

Apparently I could as, while Stephens did indeed portray her as a chatterbox, and the latter third of the audiobook was particularly shrill with Lucy all spastic, I was carried away by a story more Gothic than the first.

Lucy is sent to live and work as a chaperon to two young women while their stepmother is laid out awaiting the birth of a child. It turns out that this is the third child for stepmother Gussie, the first two, both boys, having died under verrrry mysterious and tragic circumstances. It’s a strange and tense household, there are family secrets galore that Lucy stumbles upon, and she’s forced to keep these things to herself, divulging them to nary a living soul, particularly to Mr. Leo Audley, Gussie’s big brother and a handsome and shameless flirt/rake.

So that’s what all the Mystery is here, and I’m such a dunce when it comes to mysteries that I don’t even bother trying to figure out Whodunnit but am content to let things unfold as the author chooses to write them. So I can’t tell you if it’s a gooooood mystery, with clever red herrings thrown in to steer ya off the track, and with a satisfying conclusion. All I can tell you?

Ahhhhh, I liked the romance part of it (See? I don’t know why you even bother with me when it comes to anything OTHER than the romance part of a book!). Leo Audley, the beguiling rake, has no intention of falling in love, and this isn’t annoying considering the author somewhere along the way will have him casting his petty personality failings aside in favor of true love. Here, it was actually kinda sorta believable, and I truly didn’t think it would be as Lucy comes off as such a shallow motormouth.

But the writing saves the day, and Lucy is written as someone who uses sound and chattering to fill the blank spaces, to disarm people into relaxing and speaking themselves, into spilling the beans to her, if you will. This works well when she’s trying to solve a case. And it also works well when trying to build up sympathy for her, our heroine. Yes, yes, yes, I wanted to claw my eardrums out, but I think that had more to do with the narration and less to do with Lucy as written. Truly, Stephens is a hyper enthusiastic reader…!

Still, I was unsure that anything that had me wanting to paw at my ears would translate into a proper attraction for Mr. Audley. But as it turns out, his dull life made him see her as lively, her chattering as joyful. So I sorta started seeing her from his perspective and that made the romance go down far more agreeably. The man bent on seduction actually did come across as someone who could change, someone lonely and looking for happy companionship rather than simply rolling a wooed widow.

Now here I am, with Book 2 of the series safely under my belt, satisfied that I survived the shallow sister. It’s a relief, but now I’m looking to Book 3, and we’ve come to Margaret, the quiet sister… who doesn’t speak…

And I’m wondering how on EARTH author Kingswood is going to write a romance for a young woman who is pathologically shy, and how narrator Stephens is going to voice a young woman who speaks not a word.

After Lucy’s nonstop yammering, however? Yes, I liked the book, but…

I must admit that I AM looking quite forward to the sounds of silence…!