Narrated by Gabrielle Baker
Originally published in 2009, Surrender of a Siren is the second book in Tessa Dare’s Wanton Dairymaid trilogy, and is her second published novel. It was released in audiobook format earlier this year, and although I’ve never listened to narrator Gabrielle Baker before, I decided to pick it up for review. In fact, the narration turned out to be the best thing about the listening experience; Ms. Baker’s delivery and speech patterns reminded me very much of Mary Jane Wells (who is narrating Ms. Dare’s current Girl Meets Duke series), and although I had issues with certain aspects of her performance, I enjoyed listening to her and will definitely seek out more of her narrations. When it comes to the story, however… well, it’s an early work and it shows, especially in terms of the plot and the characterisation of the heroine, who annoyed me for something like ninety percent of the book.
Desperate to avoid an unwanted marriage and determined to live a life free of restraint and full of adventure and passion, heiress Sophia Hathaway packs a bag containing four dresses and her artist materials, stashes six hundred pounds in her corset, leaves a letter for her family saying she’s eloping with her (fictitious) French drawing master, and travels to Gravesend intending to take passage to the island of Tortola in the West Indies. Once she comes into her inheritance on her twenty-first birthday – which is in a few weeks’ time – she will be able to be independent and live life as she pleases, but until then, she wants to be as far away from England as possible. Posing as Miss Jane Turner, a governess travelling to Tortola in order to take up a position with a wealthy family there, she seeks out Captain Grayson in a seedy quayside pub, intent on securing passage on his ship, the Aphrodite.
Benedict Grayson is, in his own words, “a liar, a thief, a libertine, and worse”. A former privateer, he’s now the owner of the Aphrodite (not the captain – that’s his half-brother, Joss) and with the Napoleonic Wars over, he’s turning over a new leaf – professionally and personally – by turning the Aphrodite into a respectable merchant ship and himself into… well, if not a respectable gentleman, then someone who is somewhat less disreputable than he’s been up until now. He senses immediately that Miss Turner – who is lovely despite her shabby gown, and whose eyes seem to be encouraging his already salacious thoughts – is going to prove something of a challenge to him when it comes to his resolution to give up his womanising ways, but he can’t afford to turn away a paying passenger if he’s going to make a success of his new venture.
This begins the voyage and the romance as the close proximity into which Gray and Sophia are thrown enables them to spend time together and the initial spark of attraction both felt at their first meeting to grow into fascination and a temptation that becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. As the weeks pass, Gray starts to open up to Sophia, telling her things about himself and his family that he’s never told anyone, but she doesn’t reciprocate, and this is one of my biggest issues with the story. While deception in a romance isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for me, it can be when it goes on for as long as it does here and where so many opportunities to fess up are allowed to pass by. Even after Sophia and Gray have finally made love and exchanged ILYs, she still doesn’t tell him the truth about her identity, even though he’s made it clear it bothers him that she isn’t being honest with him. She has it in her head that he won’t want her if she tells him the truth – that she’s a ruined woman who jilted her fiancé and who society thinks has run off with a lover; that she inveigled five hundred pounds from her trust fund and added to it at the gambling tables – because he’s trying to turn respectable and she’ll only bring him down. Good grief. And worse, she never actually does tell him the truth; instead he finds it out along with a room full of people in the climactic courtroom scene near the end.
I liked Gray more than Sophia, although he has moments of dickheaded-ness that don’t cover him in glory. There’s no question he says some nasty things to Sophia, but half the time they’re as a result of her holding back from him, and I could quite understand his anger when he discovers she’s been drawing him into the series of erotic illustrations she’s been making in the Wanton Dairymaid book. (I thought it was a bit creepy, tbh.)
The pacing is off, too. The voyage is looooong and the middle section of the story drags, plus there are things that just don’t make sense, like Joss’ volte face as regards Gray and Sophia (initially, he warned Gray off, then, once they’re together, he’s fine with it). Speaking of Joss, it’s good to see the positive representation of a PoC character (the same is true of their sister), and there are also a handful of colourful and engaging secondary characters – like young Davy – who add some light relief to the tale.
As I said at the beginning, the best thing about this new audio version of Surrender of a Siren is the narration, and I’ll definitely be seeking out more of Gabrielle Baker’s work. She has an attractive, mid-range voice and delivers an animated performance that is well-paced and clearly enunciated throughout. She does a good job with the various accents – cockney, Irish, West Indian and others – that crop up during the course of the story and her vocal characterisations are a good fit for gender, age and station. Her differentiation is good on the whole, but she doesn’t have a great range when it comes to male voices and I found it difficult to tell the difference between Gray and Joss in their scenes together because they’re performed in the same register, and with the same inflection. There’s also not a great deal of difference between Ms. Baker’s ‘narrative voice’ and the tone she uses for Sophia, so there were times I wasn’t sure if I was listening to narrative or dialogue. On the whole though, this is a strong performance that hits all the right emotional notes and helps to smooth out some of the lumps in the storytelling.
I’m afraid I can’t really recommend Surrender of a Siren. Although I liked the hero, that wasn’t enough to enable me to ignore the weaknesses in the story and the annoying heroine. If you’re interested in listening to Gabrielle Baker, she has over fifty titles listed at Audible, so maybe try one of those instead.
Caz
Buy Surrender of a Siren by Tessa Dare on Amazon
