Lovely narrator, amazing story

Excellent voices for all the characters, really enjoyed this audible. I can tell I will be revisiting it often.

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Love the book, narrator fails.

This is a brilliantly funny book which has none of that evident in this narration. The narrator has plenty of expression, but it isn’t always appropriate expression and a lot of it is disjointed. Does nobody brief the narrators? So many of them read the books as pretty poor, simple stories when Heyer was full of humour. I’m literally having to find the humour for myself… even when Bouncer is preventing Eleanor from moving! It should be laugh out loud but isn’t. A good actor who should have prepared better.

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Too many mistakes

The yarn is good ( though a few loose ends could do with tidying up), but why oh why does the reader say “exciting” instead of “existing”, “ precious “ instead of “ previous”, “way” instead of “say”, “ his” instead of” this”, etc, etc, etc ?? And, above all, why is Becky given a strong regional accent when she ( a governess) is certainly the daughter of an impoverished gentleman, probably a clergyman, and therefore to be expected to speak in refined tones? This is not the first Georgette Heyer Audible book that is misread: I am ready to volunteer as a reader. My accent is slightly Irish, which would perhaps prevent verisimilitude, but having read the novels over and over again, I could promise exact pronunciation and correct emphasis in each sentence. Interested?

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3 people found this helpful

Poor Narrator

I know this book of old and have read a number of times…
Awful storytelling…surely the reader at least runs through the script before recording…very disjointed sentences, odd accent’s especially Becky, and Carlyon for that matter, an essential character to get right, half the time you wondered if Carlyon thought he’d strayed into the wrong story!!! Miserable carping heroine who should have been much more humerus and ironic.
A good book ruined.
Worst Audible listen yet!

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1 person found this helpful

Exciting

Riveting and exciting drama.

Georgette Heyer is a masterstroke, of such quality of writing.

Very well narrated, and worth a read.

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Another good story.

I have read this book myself many times but this was the first time I have listened. Unfortunately I found the narrator's way of saying Carlyon such an annoyance. I have always thought it to be Car-le-on NOT Car Lyon. Car Lyon is so clumsy and just does not flow. He also said the ministers name incorrectly from my perspective. Apart from that the narration was acceptable.

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Let down by the narration

One of Heyer’s more nonsensical plots but still full of fun and romance. Unfortunately the pleasure was marred for me by the narrator who got his voices mixed and his sentences garbled at key moments.

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4 people found this helpful

Sadly let down by the narration

I really love The Reluctant Widow, it's one of my favourite Georgette Heyer books but the narration was so stilted and almost monotone that it lost all of the charm and was hard to get through.

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1 person found this helpful

Has narrator got a speech impediment?

I love this story and still enjoy my previous version on it.
This version however has a more believable end, in the way it is portrayed by the narrator BUT : you have to get used to him first.
I spent the first few chapters trying to work out if he could only say words in groups of 3 or 4, regardless where the punctuation marks are or if he was only able to read a few words at a time, and he had not taken the effort to read each chapter before actually recording them. The errors in pronunciation of such words as "quiet and quite" are alarming if you like the story to flow rather than go back to see what was wrong with what you heard.

I did think about returning it, but if he does have a speech problem, he has made a fairly good job of it.

Along with others : most of these latest penguin books by GH not up to previous versions I have purcahsed.

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11 people found this helpful

Listen to a sample before you buy

Excellent story ruined by the narration. It does get less stilted the longer you listen but the phrasing bears no relation to the punctuation, some of the pronunciation is strange and the accents are all over the place with Miss Beccles being particularly awful. I don't like to be negative but I really did not enjoy this narrator and am currently debating whether I will even finish it.

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2 people found this helpful