Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare

Narrated by Eva Kaminsky

If you’re looking for a sweet, feel-good, historical romance, with a Cinderella like plot, then I highly recommend Any Duchess Will Do. This was my first book by Tessa Dare, and I guarantee it will not be my last. Not only did I love the writing, and attention to character development, but this story even managed to deliver on a number of fronts that I wasn’t expecting. For example, I really enjoyed Ms. Dare’s unique twist to explain the Duke’s reluctance to marry and the unconventional nature of this memorable heroine (including – GASP – that she is not a virgin). I was also highly amused by a number of the humorous scenes that Ms. Dare interspersed throughout. It takes great courage to deviate from the typical historical romance mold, and even greater talent to make it all work as a great historical romance!

What does Griffin York, the Duke of Halford do when his mother is determined to see him married, and he is equally hell bent to end the marriage discussion once and for all? He makes his mother a bet that he will only marry if she can, in one week, transform the girl of his choosing into a lady worthy of the duchess title. Then he picks the one person he is sure his mother will never be able to transform into a proper duchess – Pauline Simms, a serving girl. To doubly ensure his success, he at the same time employs Pauline to guarantee that she will fail.

Pauline accepts Griffin’s offer in the hope that she will be able to escape her father, and finally set up her dream circulating library with the 1,000 pounds Griffin has promised her. What neither Griffin nor Pauline counts on though is that despite the thirty-three orders of ranking between them, they are both more well suited for each other than anyone of their class could ever be. As their plotting towards a successful failure brings them together, they can’t avoid the unavoidable, but can society ever accept such a scandalous and unlikely match?

Unfortunately, the one downside of this audiobook was the narration, which had one of the worst breathing issues that I have ever listened to. It was so bad that I spent a day debating whether to DNF it. The audible prolonged gasps for air were so distracting, that I almost couldn’t concentrate on the story. The story itself, however, was so good, that I forced myself through it. Had this not been an “A” story, I have no doubt that the result would have been different.

This is especially sad given that the narrator otherwise was quite talented and, without the breathing issue, which could have been eliminated with training and/or better editing, could have made this an exceptional audiobook. In particular, I really loved Eva Kaminsky’s ability to switch back and forth between the aristocratic sounding characters and the commoners. Her depictions greatly helped drive home the class based theme of this book. This was particularly difficult in Any Duchess Will Do because Pauline’s mastery of proper English evolves over the story as she starts taking “Duchess training” allocution lessons from Griffin’s mother.

Another aspect of the narration where Ms. Kaminsky excelled was producing distinguishable voices for same gendered characters, even when they were of the same class. My favorite character was Griffin, who she expertly infused with just the right amount of aristocratic intonation while at the same time allowing his tenderness towards Pauline to shine through while increasing in intensity over the course of the book.

All in all, I loved this story. There was a lot of depth to this seemingly familiar story, and it had just the right mix of self-discovery and personal growth, as well as, romance and passion that I value in my romantic listens. Although the narration definitely had it’s issues, I think Eva Kaminsky has great talent. If in the future, I can confirm that the breathing issues have been resolved, perhaps by sound-sampling the narration first, then I wouldn’t mind giving her another try, as I have no doubt that without that issue her narration would be great.

BJ

Narration:  C-

Book Content:  A

Steam Factor:  For your burning ears only

Violence:  Minimal fighting

Genre:  Historical Romance

Publisher:  Harper Audio

Any Duchess Will Do was provided to AudioGals by Harper Audio for a review.