From Cradle to Grave

Royal Spyness, Book 19

By: Rhys Bowen

Narrated by: Gemma Dawson

Lady Georgiana “Georgie” Rannoch is just like any other new mother, balancing responsibilities of being 34th in line for the British throne and solving the shocking deaths of several young men, in this new Royal Spyness novel from the queen of historical mystery, Rhys Bowen.

Georgie may be figuring out what it means to be a new mother but she does know one thing for sure: she absolutely despises the strict nanny who was foisted upon her by her meddlesome sister-in-law. In search of a new nanny, Georgie travels to London to see her old friend ZouZou only to find her about to depart for a funeral, after the unexpected death of a young man in her social circle. It quickly becomes clear there’s more than one mysterious death around town, when another friend reveals he’s also just returned from the funeral of a school friend, who seemingly died in a boating accident. But when word arrives that the son of family friend has also died tragically and unexpectedly, Georgie is certain it can’t be a coincidence. Yet the victims don’t seem to have any connection to one another.

ZouZou shares Georgie’s suspicions that the deaths were not an accident and begs Georgie to solve the case. As Georgie delves deeper, she can’t help worrying that her own husband, Darcy, may be next. It seems likely there is a serial killer at work and Darcy fits the bill to be their next victim. Will Georgie solve the murders before it’s too late for Darcy, and manage to find the perfect nanny all at the same time?

©2025 Janet Quin-Harkin (P)2025 Audible, Inc.

Not the best…

I was disappointed in the story and the narrator. The last few books have not lived up to my expectations of what the story and the characters were in the first few books. Queenie isn’t funny anymore. She’s just obnoxious. This new narrator is awful. You can’t tell the difference between some of the characters.

Good story - disappointing reader

As usual, Rhys Bowen’s story is intriguing and her characters engaging.
I’m afraid this reader did not do the characters justice. Aside from Lady Georgie’s upper crust British accent, the reader just couldn’t do any of the other accents. Darcy’s Irish lilt, Princess Zemanska’s Romanian both sounded totally British. Even Queenie’s cockney got mangled. Please find someone else who can recreate the characters’ voices.

New narrator made this difficult for me

This is the second narrator change. I understand that at times this is necessary, and the last time was due to narrator passing away. However the 2nd narrator listened to the previous and was able to follow the voices pretty closely. This 3rd one seems to have picked up on her own without instruction. I was most affected by Darcy. I missed his irish accent.

New narrator is terrible!!!!!

I can hardly listen to this and can’t purchase another book until there is a new narrator!
More than one characters sound exactly like Lady Mary
None of the characters have the same accent from sentence to sentence
Darcy sounds like a goon
Belinda sounds like a lunatic
Georgie sounds snobby and that is the opposite of her personality
And she is over projecting terribly!!!!!

Good Story but

When I ordered the audio version, I didn’t realize the narrator had changed. It was very difficult to tell one character’s voice from another and made the normally enjoyable listen quite difficult. I increased the pace of narration to get through the book. If the next book has the same narrator, I will buy the Kindle version.