The Wages of Sin

Series: The Sarah Gilchrist Series, Book 1

By: Kaite Welsh / Narrated By: Mary Jane Wells

Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins

Wonderful, and there’s a sequel I’m hoping will be even better!

Yep, I’ve read the middling reviews, and I’ve gotta say that I can’t concur with them that the mystery of this late Victorian period piece is obvious from early on. Which is NOT to say that it’s not obvious; more, it’s like I’m an oblivious git who happens to be new to the Mysteries genre. I get caught up in the story and devour red herrings hook line and sinker… so suuuuue me!

And I TOTALLY got swept up by this story of Sarah Gilchrist, fallen and shamed woman, one of twelve women in the first class of women to be taught medicine in Edinburgh Scotland. The young women deal with professors who are angry they’ve been relegated to teaching mere women, who turn a blind eye on the many reeeeeally mean-spirited “pranks” male students pull on them. They deal with the hostility of these male students, and it’s enough to have anyone here in the Age of #MeToo shaking his/her head in disgust that such have always been the way. Not only that, but these young women, seeking lives in medicine, also are fairly well-bred young ladies who have to live up to societal expectations at home, finding a way to seek education yet never turning their backs on HAVING to wed and wed well also.

Sarah Gilchrist is a young woman from an upstanding family whose mother and father packed her off to an asylum for wayward girls in an effort to quell her adamant desire for a continuing education. She’s headstrong, determined, but oh so very softhearted also. I love that, in an effort to learn all she can, she works at an infirmary that serves the downtrodden, thieves and whores, and she feels the plight of the struggling working classes. Away from her native London and sent to live with her aunt and uncle, she believes they’re okay with her working at the infirmary so that she might see that it’s only through their benevolence that she is but one step away from dirt, filth, poverty, and homelessness.

Oh she sees that, boy does she see it for herself; one false move, and she understands she’s on the streets, disowned, not a penny of her own. And when a young woman named Lucy blows into the infirmary, distraught, angry and making demands, she feels for her. So much so that when Lucy turns up in the medical college, a battered corpse ready for students to dissect, Sarah is distraught herself, and she vows to find Lucy’s killer. This sets her on course to visit brothels, bawdy houses, even to fight clubs, where she sees and so feels for all those who are caught up in such lives, such activities.

And may I say here that this engaging story is narrated by none other than Mary Jane Freaking Wells? Probably my favorite female narrator, I’m constantly astounded at the ease in which she delivers not only accents, but back and forth accents, the uptown London accent bouncing against the deep-throatish Scottish burr, women of the upper caste being derided by women of the fallen orders, action juggled with deep and soulful introspection. And her men sound like men, not all growly and in waaaaay too low a register, but fully-fleshed men of precision or of action. That one of the professors, Gregory Merchiston, keeps showing up to class with black eyes and bruised knuckles, upbraiding even as he compliments, turns out to be a bit of dawning romantic interest? Huzzah, Ms. Wells: You had me soooo engaged by his character that by the time he shows up shirtless, sweating, brooding, I was danged near ready to swoon with delight.

And tho’ I’m quite the lover of romances, I was delighted that this is in no way a romance carefully disguised as a murder mystery. Relationships are slow to evolve, and friendships between women rule the day. If anything, this is a Social Commentary/History of what it was like to be a curious woman in the era, how frowned upon it was.

One reviewer carped that Sarah was kinda all over the place, unlikable considering that she had a modern day woman’s sensibilities unreal for the time, and that she’d be an advocate for herself one minute, downtrodden just a minute later. But that’s kinda sorta what I liked best about her, and if you can call determination and grit modern day sensibilities, well I rather don’t agree on that score. Sarah has been wrung through the wringer, so she’s excited and dedicated to have the opportunity to study medicine, but she’s firmly stuck in a world where she’s expected to drop it all once she marries well. She has to live according to the strictures of society and her aunt and uncle, and she does indeed bounce between living her will and in acquiescing to that which is expected of her—she knows what happens if you stray too far off the given path; she sees it all the time at the infirmary for the unwashed and unwanted. I liked that she felt strongly as a woman yet, especially given what happened to her at the asylum, is fearful of what all ELSE can happen to her.

So I finished this audiobook right bang-up quickly, and I was over the mooooon to see that Audible’s new Plus Catalog has the sequel free to check out (And what is it? Is Audible trying to keep us from owning digital content now? Dunno, dunno, but I full well intend to check the heck outta as many audiobooks as are available!).

I expect it to be that much better with author Katie Welsh being even more sure of her characters and even more greatly atmospheric as to the drawing rooms of Society vs. the filth and hopelessness of the streets.

And again? Mary Jane Wells! And hopefully a shirtless every now and again Gregory Merchiston!

What’s NOT to look forward to?!?