The Reluctant Widow

Gossip, scandal and an unforgettable Regency romance

De: Georgette Heyer

Narrado por: Daon Broni

Brought to you by Penguin.

One of the best-known and most beloved historical novelists, Georgette Heyer, as ever, captures a whole new audience's heart.

Stepping into the wrong carriage at a Sussex village, Elinor Rochdale is swept up in a thrilling and dangerous adventure. Overnight the would-be governess becomes mistress of a ruined estate and partner in a secret conspiracy to save a family's name. By midnight, she is a bride, by dawn, a widow.

A typically thrilling and sweeping tale of romance and tragedy, The Reluctant Widow is Georgette Heyer at her best - the undisputed queen of historical romance.

©1946 Georgette Heyer (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Unpleasant narration

Love Georgette Heyer and this book, but I couldn’t stand the narration. All the voices sound the same, and the tone is off.

Very Good Story

The reason I gave this book only four stars is because I really could not like the heroine. I believe a woman living in her time and circumstances would have been more appreciative of events that had occurred but all she could do is whine and complain even when others pointed out the good that would come of the circumstances. Otherwise the story is very good and the performance is excellently done. If the heroine hadn't been so irritating it would have definitely been a five-star book.

always a fun time

One of my favourite Georgette Heyer's - amusing from start to finish.
Narration could've been better, but is far better than some attempts of other Heyer novels (unfortunately). At least I'm not constantly correcting his reading of one passage or another, and I can pardon all his errors because he hits the exact right tone for the supposed villian of the piece (with hilarious results, imo)

Not a good Georgette Heyer

Oh this is so disappointing! I am a fan of GH and love 90% of her stories but this one did not work for me. The only good thing was Nicky and his dog. If you are choosing between this GH and any other (I have read them all) choose another!

The narrator did not help. Very stilted.

So much fun

I loved Nick and his dog, Bouncer (I think that was his name). They’re really hilarious. It must have been fun to write those parts of the book, plus the reader kept the diction lively and realistic. He managed to act out the characters with differing intonations. He made the novel come alive. Well worth the time to listen to the novel.

Another fun Heyer romp

Fun and well read. Story failed to keep my interest in a few sections compared to her best books, but is overall very good.

Twist and turns

A love story for sure with intrigue, history, mystery, and simply enjoyable. Character development and narration was superb.

Not Heyer’s best, but not her worst

I’m learning that Heyer creates interesting and endearing characters, but has trouble giving them something to do. I feel like she wanted this to be a romance, got distracted by a missing document plot, then with a jolt remembered it was supposed to be a romance. Even though we know from the start who Elinor will end up with, it doesn’t really make sense because she’s barely spent any time with him. She spends way more time with someone else, and a sweet friendship develops. The entire book takes place in a week, so what else can develop but a friendship? Heyer gave too much screen time to the wrong people here.

Other reviews have complained about the narration, but it’s more the engineer than the narrator. He does a great job with all the characters, except Elinor could have stood out more. There ARE some weird pauses, but that’s down to the sound engineer. Sometimes when tracks are placed in order, they need a second or two shaved off at the end. Hopefully they’ll take it down and run through it again to catch the dead air.

Painful narration

Look, I try to give narrators a pass. Their job is something I could never do. This guy does a passable job at emotions, and there aren't any noticeable mistakes.
But.
The voices are almost all the same. Thankfully he reads the dialogue tags, or I might have missed a couple changes.
That's nothing, however, when compared to the...
...
...almost full-second pauses...
...
...at the end of every sentence.
Like, this is Georgette Heyer.
We've got people cutting each other off, which sounds like:
"But I told you I was-"
(full-second pause)
"I don't care where you were!" (Full-second pause.) "I asked you to come right away!"
And then we've got a character whose whole THING is talking quickly and smoothly, stream-of-consciousness style, so no one suspects he has a thought in his head which isn't said out loud.
That effect is ruined and kinda painful to hear...
When every couple of words...
There's a full break...
In the narration.
Seriously, this is the first time I've considered stopping a book halfway through and demanding my money back, it was so bad.
I'd bet a solid hour of the runtime is blank space.
If there is ANY other audio version of this book out there, get that one instead. I bet versions where someone's reading it into their phone mic to put on YouTube are less painful to hear than this.

This is one of my fav GH novels!

This is one of my fav GH novels! The narrator did a good job with male voices, but not so much the female. Wish they would get Mary Jane Wells to do them all!