The Wild Child

De: Mary Jo Putney

Narrado por: Barbara Rosenblat

I met a lady in the meads /
Full beautiful, a faery's child. /
Her hair was long, her foot was light, /
And her eyes were wild.
(John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci")

Keats' famous poem might be describing Lady Meriel Grahame, the enchanting heroine of this passionate tale set amidst magical gardens. An equally appealing leading man, a thrilling love story, and a rich historical milieu make this novel positively irresistible.

More pagan than lady, Meriel spends her days running barefoot through her English estate, cultivating her flowers and her mystical connection to nature. She is mute and, according to most people, mad. But handsome Dominic Renbourne, who has been sent by his twin to court her, senses in Meriel a kindred spirit. He manages to inspire her trust, and against his better judgement, her passion.

Award-winning New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author Mary Jo Putney lives up to her reputation for creating strong, intelligent characters. Barbara Rosenblat's stimulating performance will awaken all your senses, if not the wild child in you.

©1999 Mary Jo Putney (P)2000 Recorded Books, LLC

Very pleased! Love it!

I cried, laughed as I listen I could imagine myself in those gardens….
Beautiful challenges relationships.
The action of real love!

rude awakening

Review of audiobook borrowed through Audible Plus.
Possible Spoilers:
Originally published December 31, 1998, this story holds up because it’s more authentic to the period than many of the books I’ve read since then. The description of the period and dialogue is much better. Not Austen level, but no modern slang!

Kyle Renbourne, Lord Maxwell, bribes his twin, Dominic Renbourne, into changing places with him and spending time at Warfield, the country estate of Lady Mariel Grahame whom Kyle intends to marry. They haven’t switched places since they were children and Dominic doesn’t want to, but Kyle bribes him with Bradshaw Manor that D loves. As the second twin, second son, he has no expectations of inheriting anything. But D loves the land. In his arrogance, Kyle mistakenly believes no one will be able to tell the difference.
Lady Mariel lives a reclusive lifestyle, not meeting with or talking to anyone. She has not talked since she was 5 when her parents were murdered in India by thugs and their palace burned. It was thought she died, too, but Mariel was rescued and lived in a harem for a year before being returned to England. Her guardians are her uncles, Oliver, Lord Amworth, her mother’s brother and Francis, Lord Grahame, her father’s brother. Graham wants to institutionalize her, Amworth refuses. Mariel grows up on the walled estate of Warfield with two widowed distant cousins for supervision and elderly retainers to keep things functioning. At 23, she speaks to no one, she lives mostly in the gardens, loves her plants & animals, and she avoids almost everyone. Then Dominic comes and is knocked over by her beauty. He figures out how to lure her into approaching him. Just when they grow close, Grahame takes advantage of Amworth’s failing health and puts her in an institution. D finds a way to get her out but they will need to marry for her legal protection. It’s a rude awakening for Meriel that she isn’t totally protected behind her walls and she needs others.
Kyle has been out of the country hiding that he has taken his aging mistress back to Spain to die. He is deeply grieving and returns in time to feel betrayed by his brother. It takes the intervention of their sister and Meriel’s attempted murder to reconcile the brothers and motivate Kyle to find a new direction. If you want his story, you get to read The China Bride.
I don’t much care for Rosenblat’s narration. I don’t think her voice was a good fit for this story. Plus, too often it felt like she was emoting instead of disappearing into the story as happens with the best narrations.
Loved the author interview at the end!

Wonderful!

I loved this story! I have had and listened to The Bartered Bride for years, but I always wanted to listen to the first two stories in this trilogy. I was so excited to get The Wild Child and it didn't disappoint. Sooooo, where is The China Bride??? I hate having a series and missing books from it. I agree that the narrator wasn't that good but I enjoyed this story so much that I overlooked it.

Worth reading

An interesting story, good narration, and well-developed characters make for a good experience. I especially enjoyed the interview with the author at the end of the audible version of the book. Well done!

so enjoyable!

wonderful, multi-faceted and adorable heroine. Meriel is one of the best written heroines in all the hundreds of romance novels I have read. really special listening experience, narration was smooth and excellent.

Where is China Bride, the 2nd book?

I enjoy this book a lot. I have had the paper back and hard back covers for years.
I'm not a huge fan of the reader. She does well for the most part, but for some reason she doesn't seem to understand the cues about how someone is speaking. When it says that Mariel said something sharply she still reads it as though Mariel is talking in her sleep. Those kind of mistakes bothered me. And she also made the two brothers sound very excited when they were supposed to be speaking seriously or angrily about certain things. That was rather annoying. She did fine on the normal reading of the story but she did not pay attention to all the details of how someone was supposed to speak.

I also would like to know why the second book "China Bride" was never recorded. That's the story of Kyle and how he finds, obviously, his bride in China. That's a really good story too. The fact that this book was recorded in 2000, and it's now 2018, makes me wonder why the other book has never been recorded. Maybe somebody should get on that. I'd like to finish listening to the story.

Where are the other titles in the trilogy!

Enjoyed the book very much. Interesting character combinations. I am very disappointed to find out the other two titles in the series are not available on audible. This is becoming a very frustrating pattern to need to check if an entire series is available before starting the first title.

Pretty Good

I liked this story because it was different, original. I found the story of sibling rivalry intriguing and hw childhood trauma shapes individuals. I've never been a prude but the overly sexualized nature of the FMC really turned me off. At one point she basically rapes the MMC. Some would say seduced but since he was manipulated without his consent it was rape in my book.
If you can get beyond that, it's a pretty good story.

The wild child

A very good time I had, reading this book! I loved the main characters and the garden scene descriptions.

Very disappointing

The premise of this book - what happens to a child who has experienced severe trauma and has almost entirely retreated from the world - is full of dynamic potential. However, Putney has written a sappy romance along with ridiculous unbelievable mental responses and development as the character is unveiled - thus completely ditching any real interest the subject could have offered. If you like romance then you will probably like the book because there are some nice descriptions of the gardens and of the main characters' physical beauty.