Love Unsought

A Pride & Prejudice Variation

By: Kay Bea

Narrated by: William Matthews

Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy seem determined to misunderstand one another, and after his disastrous proposal, both are eagerly wishing to forget their acquaintance. But fate, with assistance from Darcy’s scheming cousins, contrives to keep them together.

When Miss Darcy is summoned to Kent, the couple has a chance to begin anew, and their budding friendship carries them to London and Hertfordshire. Their feelings deepen but before their new understanding is made known, Elizabeth is sent to Brighton as chaperone to her youngest sister. Her stay there ends in ruin when Darcy’s past comes to call.

Upon discovering the situation is worse than he feared, Darcy determines he must be the one to make things right. His departure leaves Elizabeth in doubt and their future in question. Was their love too new to withstand a scandal?

A series of missed chances, misdirected letters, and miscommunications keeps the couple apart; it make require the intervention of their nearest relations to bring them back together.

©2020 Kay Be (P)2020 Quills & Quartos Publishing

Couldn’t finish with awful reader

This performer spoke female lines as if every single line ended in an exclamation mark. They never spoke with subtly, irony, sarcasm, sadness, tiredness, etc. only excitement! Guess what? People don’t speak that way.

Mrs. B and Lydia at their worst.

A good narration by William Matthews. I like his voice very much, but when doing female voices in particular, he tends to make the ends of their sentences sound a bit on the whiney side. I’d like to hear him ‘perform’ the voices more. There isn’t much animation in the performance. Good reading though. The prologue of this book, first read in 2020, captured my attention immediately then, and also as the audiobook began. I liked the time between ODC and the influence of the cousins, Anne and Colonel Fitzwilliam, post Hunsford proposal. Darcy doesn’t leave for London as usual. The portrayals of Mrs. Bennet and Lydia were quite outrageous. Mr. Bennet finally gets a clue. It seemed a bit drawn out at the end. I thought the great romance between ODC seemed a bit lacking. I would have enjoyed more personal time and dialogue between them. I did enjoy it and recommend.

Terrible female voices

Every single female character was the same screechy voice. No difference in tone for any of them. Story was decent, but the terrible narration made it a hard listen.

Nice story

I enjoyed this story very much. The narrator was new to me and I thought he sometimes sounded a bit stiff. But good all over.

Good read, poor listen

The story was good and well written. The narration was poor. This one is better to read than listen.