Rating: WARTY!
I didn't realize this was part of a series (Sinful Family Secrets, volume 3) otherwise I would never have requested it from the library. I'm not a fan of series. That said, it appears to be amenable to reading as a stand-alone, and as an audiobook, it seemed like it offered an interesting read. Unfortunately it's yet another American author thinking she can write Victorian drama. Some US authors can do it admirably, but others cannot. This one gets too much wrong, and authenticity falls victim to this failed effort.
Additionally, there was paragraph after paragraph of idle gossip which I am sure the author was thrilled with herself for, but which was boring, and which did nothing whatsoever to move the story, except into the DNF category. I was twenty percent in before anything of interest happened, and by that time I was so tired of the reader's voice and the lackluster plot that I gave up on it. The book was read by Justine Eyre, whose voice was a bit annoying. I recognized it at once from other audiobooks because it's very distinctive, but in the other book I recall, she sounded far too mature for the character she was reading about (and it was first person which made the discrepancy worse). In this case her voice tended to fall off to what sounded rather like a pout at the end of each sentence which became irritating after a while. Even with a perfect reading voice though, the story would still have dragged abominably.
The basis of it is that Evelyn Hadley-Attwater used to be a government spy. She purportedly worked for the Department of Foreign and Domestic Affairs, but 'Department' is an American thing. In Victorian England it would much more likely have been called an 'office' since it wasn't large at all, or a ministry. Additionally, Lady Evelyn is married to a Count, but again there's a problem because 'Count' isn't really an English title at all. It's European, where the man would be a compte, or a graf, or something along those lines, so this didn't really work either and felt appallingly pretentious.
This is also a story where the main character has retired but is called back into service because no one else can do the job. Yes, everyone is utterly incompetent except our miracle hero. Barf. These stories usually feature some guy named Jack who is ex-military, or he's a troubled FBI serial-killer profiler, and I avoid such stories like the plague because they're too tedious for words. The idea here is that there's tension now between Evelyn's need to get this one last job done, and her need to shield her husband from her activities. My wild guess is that her husband is the very man who used to hand out her assignments when she worked for the "Department" and she doesn't realize he's her fantasy guy (whom she never met). Of course I may be completely wrong with that, but I really don't care because I honestly don't care about this character. I cannot recommend this: it was boring.
