Narrated by Kate Reading
At long last, fans of Willig’s Pink Carnation series are getting the Carnation’s story in The Lure of the Moonflower! A series that began with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, Willig has spun a tale of 2 centuries – “current day” (starting about 2004), and roughly 2 centuries earlier, the tale of a league of spies in the vein of the Scarlet Pimpernel helping to rout Napoleon.
It’s a story-within-a-story, so there’s a wrapper of contemporary, wherein American scholar Eloise Kelly is in London researching her dissertation about British spies during the Napoleonic era. As she reads the documents about the spies, the first book slips first into 1803, where Amy Balcourt is trying to become a member of the League of the Purple Gentian, the, ahem, fictional successor to the Scarlet Pimpernel. Over the course of 12 novels, we meet the Midnight Manzanilla, the Blood Lily, the Purple Plumeria and various other flower spies, while Eloise continues to work on her doctoral dissertation, finding love along the way.
SPOILER ALERT if you have not read the first book in the series: Jane Wooliston is the Pink Carnation. Readers of the series learn this early on, but Jane is denied her HEA and even her family’s support before she is paired on a mission in Portugal with a British operative who speaks fluent Portuguese, the Moonflower. Jack Reid – son of Colonel Reid introduced in an earlier book – is half-British, half-Indian, and has never been at ease or at home in either culture. As the Moonflower, he is awaiting his orders, not expecting his colleague to be the infamous Pink Carnation.
As Jack and Jane try to find the missing monarch, Queen Maria of Portugal, who has been spirited away by loyalists hoping to win Portugal back from France, Eloise and Colin learn another important lady has been spirited away: Colin’s great-aunt Arabella Selwick-Alderly is being held hostage during their wedding rehearsal dinner. Will Jack and Jane find Queen Maria? Can Eloise and Colin rescue Aunt Arabella?
Willig’s writing is at once flippant and funny – she is the very master of alliteration – as well as emotional and touching at times, and also well-researched. Much of the prose is tongue-in-cheek, and I found myself laughing through every book, including this one. She ends her books with notes to readers, however, in which she quotes her historical sources and reveals when and how she took any artistic license with historical situations.
Kate Reading is a master narrator with the ability to read extremely well in both American and British accents, and she also acquits herself well in French and only slightly less in Portuguese (admittedly a language not as widely used in English novels!). Her pacing is natural, easy to listen to, and her acting skills in bringing these 2 different stories to life are amazing. She uses pitch and tone to differentiate all of the various characters – Colin’s bored society mother, his sleazy cousin/step-father, his younger sister and his great-aunt all get fully developed and consistent characters throughout the series, as do Eloise’s friends and family. In addition, there are the many, many characters in the spy league and their nemeses and allies, all clearly understood, in a variety of accents. (One of the books uses a different narrator who is also very talented but does not compare to Reading’s performance.)
I think Carnation fans will be pleased with Jane and Jack’s story, which has a suitably romantic ending, and also with the conclusion of Eloise and Colin’s story. This could be read as a stand-alone, but why would you, when there are 11 other wonderful books in the series to enjoy?
[section label=’Audiobook Information’ anchor=’Audiobook Information’]
Melinda
AUDIOBOOK INFORMATION
TITLE: The Lure of the Moonflower
AUTHOR: Lauren Willig
NARRATED BY: Kate Reading
GENRE: Historical Romance
STEAM FACTOR: Glad I had my earbuds in
REVIEWER: Melinda [button type=’link’ link=’http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01154DDEY/?tag=audiogalsnet-20′ size=’btn-lg’ variation=’btn-default’ target=’blank’]Buy The Lure of the Moonflower by Lauren Willig on Amazon[/button] [section label=’Excerpt’ anchor=’Excerpt’]EXCERPT:
I absolutely loved this book, and Kate Reading is the best! Only one of the Pink Carnation series’ didn’t use her as their narrator, and the book suffered for it. I originally read all of these books (except for Moonflower) in the traditional way, and have been re-reading them in the audio book format. What a treat! Kate really brings all of the characters to life and makes the author’s sense of humor really shine. I highly recommend the entire series!
I love Kate Reading’s work and was hoping to start at the beginning of this series but unfortunately Audible is only showing from book 9 as being available to me at present. Hopefully the older ones will become available at some point. Off to check the library just in case in the meantime!
I just checked and audible has all of Lauren Willig’s books available. Maybe there was a glitch in your internet?
Good luck!
I expect it’s a geo restriction thing. The books sometimes turn up after a while – I guess contract restrictions can change with time.
What about Overdrive? All her books are in their catalog.
Don’t hold your breath on OverDrive having it in digital for. E-book maybe. But they charge a lot of money for libraries in just to have access to their downloads.
I can get the first 6 as ebooks from the library here but they don’t have any audiobooks from this series and no other ebooks (yet).
It’s the same here in the UK :( so I’m sure its down to geo-restrictions. It’s so infuriating when you want to give people your money and you can’t!
So sorry to see the end of one of my favorite series, but as said ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END. I started listening to THE LURE OF THE MOONFLOWER, but so far haven’t finished it since I had a couple of Overdrive downloads come through for me to listen. I own the Moonflower download so I can finish it whenever I want to. Overdrive is on a time limit.