More Than a Stranger by Erin Knightley

Narrated by Alison Larkin

More Than a Stranger began very promisingly, with the hero and heroine falling into a correspondence when they are children (and I’m a sucker for a good “friends-to-lovers” story!). Lady Evelyn Moore is close to her brother, Richard, but when he goes off to Eton and forms a friendship with Benedict Hastings, Evie gets jealous. Upon receipt of yet another letter from Richard, which is full of “Hastings, this” and “Hastings, that”, eleven-year-old Evie has had enough and sets out to give the mysterious Hastings an epistolary dressing down.

He responds to her letter and thus a correspondence is born. The letters between the two in the prologue and at the beginning of each chapter are one of the highlights of the book and demonstrate that Ms. Knightley has a real talent for witty banter and engaging dialogue. Alison Larkin’s reading once again revealed her deft touch for comedic narration, and I settled in for an enjoyable listening experience.

Unfortunately however, I had listened to less than a quarter of the story before I began to get frustrated. We learn that Benedict had suddenly cut off all contact with Evie when he was eighteen and has had no contact with her for the past nine years. Neither she nor the reader/listener knows the reason for it and I discovered that I find this sort of plot development easier to cope with in print than I do in audio. There are hints that Benedict is in serious trouble, and as the story progresses, we discover that there are people looking for him who clearly do not wish him well. We are left in the dark as to why this is until well into the second half of the story.

Benedict and Evie have never met and when Benedict needs to hide out as a result of whatever trouble he’s in, he turns to his best friend for help. He journeys to Hertford Hall with Richard, not expecting the family to be in residence but their departure for London has been delayed. When he meets Evie for the first time, Benedict is almost dumbstruck but instead of telling her who he is, he gives her an assumed name, without really considering what he is doing. One lie leads to another, and another, and before long Benedict is digging himself bigger and bigger holes. Not only is that frustrating in terms of the storytelling, it doesn’t say much for Benedict’s character, or his competence. He’s been working as an agent for the Crown for the past eight or nine years, but if he’s so easily panicked into lying, I have to wonder whether he was cut out to be a spy!

That said however, Benedict is still an attractive hero, mostly because of his wit and his deep feelings for Evie, who is absolutely adorable. She’s lovely to look at, witty, clever, and independent, but despite five Seasons, is still unmarried. Her mother is looking forward to a sixth, but Evie is determined to avoid it as she does not want to marry. What she hasn’t told anybody is that she was so hurt by the way things ended between her and Benedict that she has vowed never to entrust her heart and happiness to another man. I confess to thinking that this is rather a momentous decision for a twenty-four-year-old woman of the time to make given that a) marriage was often the only course open to women of good birth and b) she’d never even met the man who broke her heart.

On the plus side, I did enjoy the way the relationship between Benedict and Evie grew slowly and it was nice that Evie fell in love with Mr. Benedict (as he called himself) before finding out that he was actually Hastings and the man with whom she had fallen in love so long ago. Even though she had no idea of his true identity, she and Benedict very quickly became comfortable enough to tease each other, which felt like a natural extension of their epistolary conversations from earlier in the book.

Alison Larkin’s voice is eminently suited to lighthearted, comedic stories, and her storytelling is clear and engaging, but I have to confess to feeling rather disappointed in her character portrayals here. She does a good job with the female characters, and it was easy to distinguish between Evie, her sisters, and her mother, but the male characters are more problematic. Ms. Larkin’s range in terms of pitch is not wide, and she only slightly deepens her voice for the men, which is fine when there is only one hero and the other male characters are in secondary roles. Here, however, there are many scenes which involve both Benedict and Richard (and later, Benedict’s brother Henry as well) and I found I often had to rely on the author’s telling me who was speaking as it was hard to distinguish in purely audio terms. I also felt that while the voice Ms. Larkin adopted for Benedict was actually quite attractive, she gave him some odd, “sing-song” intonations which made him sound rather plodding and in one particularly pivotal scene, he often spoke too quickly resulting in me not feeling any of the emotions coming from him that I believe I was supposed to feel.

I also didn’t get a sense of any real sexual tension between the two principals. I admit that I haven’t read this book (yet), but given what the author has actually written, I don’t think that was because there is no tension coming off the page. Again, I felt Ms. Larkin’s portrayal of Benedict was rather emotionally disengaged, which was a great shame, because he had the potential to be rather a sexy hero!

While I thought there were aspects of this book that weren’t successful (I don’t like “Big Misunderstanding” plots as a rule and the pacing was too slow up until the point at which Evie discovered Benedict’s true identity), I do think that More Than a Stranger  shows that Erin Knightley has true potential as a writer of historical romances. Evie, Benedict and Richard are all well-drawn, and as I’ve said before, she clearly has a good ear for witty dialogue. I will be seeking out the following book – Richard’s story – in print or audio, in the hope of reading or hearing Ms. Knightley’s potential develop further.

Caz

Narration:  C

Book Content:  C+

Steam Factor: You can play it out loud – kisses only

Violence:  Minimal (a couple of gunshots and fisticuffs)

Genre:  Historical Romance

Publisher:  Tantor Audio

More Than a Stranger was provided to AudioGals for review by Tantor Audio.