Narrated by Rosalyn Landor
I have to go on record, right up front, and let you know that Landor is not one of my favorite narrators, and here is why: her heroes are, as a rule, stuffy, overblown and dreadful. Dreadful. She is a wonderfully gifted narrator whose stiff-upper-lip, upper crust British delivery is superb when reading the story. Her character voices – even some men – are wonderful and her heroines are truly delightful. Really, she’s genuinely talented at every part of narration with the one very important exception of the hero voice in most books, which for me is a deal-breaker. Why oh why does she ruin the heroes for me? When I hear her British heroes, I’m constantly wondering: who in the world would fall for these obnoxious stuffed shirt old men?
Luckily – sort of – the hero in Prince Charming is American, so the upper crust stuffiness Landor gives British heroes is gone. Heroine Taylor is a British heiress escaping the horror of having her uncle as guardian when her grandmother dies. She marries Lucas, the American bastard of some British peer, and flees with him to America. The time period is post-Civil War and they head from Boston to Montana.
Garwood’s historicals, especially her medievals, are generally on the light side, with heroines trying to train their surly heroes in the ways of polite society and a fair amount of Keystone-cop-like behavior going on around them. In Prince Charming, Taylor still has a number of Garwood traits, but her story is darker and more serious. She knows she must avoid her pedophile uncle not only for her own safety but that of her two young orphaned nieces.
Lucas is an incredibly fetching hero – he too is looking out for others when he goes to England to secure the release of his younger, well-born brother. He needs money to pay off his brother’s current guardian and therefore agrees to marry the heiress for her money. Although the original plan is to annul the marriage once on the other side of the pond, the two develop not just a romance-novel love, but also a true friendship and need for each other and for the various characters they “adopt” along the way. It’s such a wonderful and fun road-trip story (except for the bad guys, of course).
Landor has a believable American accent for Lucas. She’s given him a sort of faux-Kentucky accent, dropping her gs and slightly, very slightly drawling. Her Lucas voice isn’t as grating as her British heroes in other books, so it lifts the experience from Dreadful to Almost Wonderful. Well played, Ms. Landor, and thank you.
Melinda
Narration: B
Book Content: B+
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence: Minimal: some gun use, and off-stage fighting
Genre: Historical Romance (American West post-Civil War)
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Prince Charming was provided to AudioGals for review by Brilliance Audio.
I thought Duerdan’s take on Lucas Ross, the hero, was pretty blah. I’d give it a C, tops. All her other character voices were great, as you said.
By the way, this book is not listed in your alphabetical list of titles. Unless I’m blind. :)