Artfully Yours

By: Joanna Lowell

Narrated by: Mary Jane Wells

Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

Sparks fly between a lordly art critic and a lady forger in this enthralling Victorian historical romance from the author of The Runaway Duchess.

Nina Finch isn't suited for a life of crime. Raised by her art-forger brother, she can paint like Botticelli. But she'd so much rather be baking gooseberry tarts. She finally has the money she needs to open her own bakery. Unfortunately, her brother's carelessness lands her—and their forgeries—directly under the nose of London's most discerning art critic, Alan De'Ath. De'Ath knows the paintings are fake. He doesn't know that Nina had a hand in their creation. In fact, he offers her a job in his household. Accepting it is the most dangerous thing she has ever done....

Alan takes pride in seeing things other people miss. He plans to catch the forger and cement his reputation. There's only one problem: the closer he gets to the beguiling woman he hired, the less he trusts his perspective. Nina isn't what she seems. But despite their false start, she just might hold the real key to his heart.

As Nina and Alan’s attraction grows, divided loyalties threaten to pull them apart and shatter their worlds. They’ll lose everything, or discover how powerful true love can be....

©2022 Joanna Lowell (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Lowell's playful period language creates a strong sense of place. This cute, quippy romp is sure to win romance fans.”—Publishers Weekly

“A delight…readers are rewarded with multidimensional characters and an unusual and engrossing love story."—Booklist

I love this series but…

I LOVE this series, and I have loved the narrator in the first two books. However… I wish I had read this one on paper. The voices of the characters in the narration are so strange and definitely affect the flow/emotion of the novel.

Ummm

Really like this author generally. I liked aspects of this book as well but didn’t really feel the connection between main characters. Could be performance— Mary Jane Wells is a fantastic narrator but the accent for Alan was too high and snooty sounding, and the accent for Nina too working class. Just made the plot even more unbelievable.

Glad I didn’t listen to the other reviews

I enjoyed the book. MJW could make the phone book entertaining with her narration. The author explains why Daeth speaks the way he does. Furthermore, the entire series has been awkward scenarios and H&H matchups; but all stories are well done.

This story has spunk

I really enjoyed this book! I think you should read the other (2) books before this one to have a context of characters for sure!
I’ve listened to roughly 300 historical romance novels in the past year and a half and I can assure you this book should have a higher review than most.

Cute, Fun Story

I love the narrator which is really the only reason I listened to this series. But the author has a way of slipping in humorous bits throughout that throw you off and are quite laugh out loud funny. Don’t miss this one. It’s fun!

Different Story Line

Totally different story line. The narration, well, I hated his voice. You've spoiled us with the snarky, sarcastic, totally 'male' voices and this one just disappointed me. He sounded so old, so frumpy and no fun, yet he was fun. Took me days to start listening again after the first half hour. Don't you know I'll purchase any book Mary Jane Wells narrates? Please Mary Jane, don't work on expanding your voice repertory. Your voices for male and female are top notch. Don't mess with a excellent thing. Oh, and I enjoyed the story and it's worth a reread.

Disappointed

Mary Jane Wells was perfect as expected, the story however could not hold my attention. I simply wasn't a fan of the characters.

That voice!

The storyline had such potential…an art investigator and a forger! Shades of How to Steal a Million, I’m thinking. But the voices for the romantic leads were a puzzling choice…his so highbrow and breathy you could hardly understand him, and hers right out of My Fair Lady. The conversations during love scenes seemed silly!

What’s more important? Love or being right.

Beautifully written and narrated. Complex relationships and forgiveness. Flawed characters who open themselves to let go for happiness. with beloved formula.

Multi-layered characters

I didn’t have problems following the course of events with the previous novels as I did in the first hour of this one. It is the only book I had to order on kindle as well. After this purchase I could follow the story a little better and found Nina and De’ath more engaging. It also helped to be re/ introduced to Lavinia and Neal Tremayne from the Runaway Duchess. Outside of that this was a good story. Top knotch performance from Mary Jane Wells.