Always My Viscount

Ever Beloved, Book 2

By: Dawn Brower

Narrated by: Eleanor Katz

Length: 2 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

What if fairy tales are real?

Donovan Turner, viscount of Warwick, is a charming reprobate. It's all an act to cover the tatters of his broken heart. French brandy is his closest ally, and he ensures it is always within reach.

Lady Estella Simms was forced into exile by her wicked stepfather without any means of support. With what little funds she has, she takes on a venture no other lady would consider to survive - smuggling.

In a twist of fate, Donovan ends up as a stowaway on board Estella's ship and too drunk to recall how. Finding Estella is the last thing he expected, but something for which he secretly hoped. Even though her heartless refusal sent him down a path of destruction, his love for her never truly died.

Danger is close, and they must rely on each other for survival. Lord Warwick and Lady Estella must learn to trust each other again and decide if love is powerful enough to conquer the evil thwarting their happily ever after.

©2018 Dawn Brower (P)2018 Dawn Brower

Always My Viscount

Lady Estella must break Donovan's heart in order to save him from ruin. Or so she thinks. Her evil stepdad blackmailed her into this decision then sends her off to exile. He thinks cutting her off financial and from society will break her, but little does he know she is very resourceful. She gets a ship and turns pirate/smuggler. Only Donovan never got over the heartbreak and with some behind the scenes help the two get thrown together. This is a fun and adventurous story. Nice job on the narration.

Delightful Listen

I really enjoyed this short Regency second chance at love story. Dawn Brower has a wonderful way of writing endearing characters and surprising twists. This book does not disappoint. Eleanor Katz performed the book beautifully with her smooth voice and distinctive voices for various characters. This book is a standalone listen and part of a series.

very good will be listening to again

Just the absolute best story. Everything I like to listen about and more. Such a great story I will listen again and again. A keeper!!

Love always wins in the end

So happy to have Donovan’s story. I feel in love with him in Forever my Earl, Ever Beloved Book 1. Donovan and Estella were torn apart by her evil Step Father. After 3 years apart they find each other in a very unique way. Estella is a strong likeable character who took drastic measures to take care of herself. Eleanor Katz did a great job with the narration moving easily between characters. Another great Dawn Brower book!

A touching read with heart

Years ago women did not always get to pick who they married for Estella this is true, her stepfather wants her to marry an old man, she doesn’t, he does nothing for her and even scares her. She has picked the man she wants, he adores her but this is not to be. If she doesn’t marry the man her stepfather picks then she will be exiled and left with no money. She has little choice her dye has been cased, but she won’t take this lying down. She must give up the man she loves, breaking his heart making him a totally different man. They both move on in different direction heartbroken one and the other not giving in to the demands, she will turn her life around and won’t let her stepfather get the upper hand. He feels sure once he sends her away it will not be long before she gives in to his demands. This is a story of love that will outlive time and how these two find their way back to each other the hard way.

The narrator does a wonderful job on narration making you feel the emotion that each character goes through. Her character voices are great, you always know who is talking and what they are feeling. There are no repeating of words, no volume changes. She delivers a delight performance that pulls you in taking you back in time to a time when life wasn’t so easy and women didn’t have choices. I really didn’t want the story to end and had trouble putting it down.

The author has a way with words, writing in a way that pulls the reader in making you apart of the story. The plot was great, her characters strong but with weakness. It was a joy to watch them overcome their issues and coming together, showing that love can last a lifetime no matter what life throws at you. I can’t wait for the next one in this series.

Regency Era Romance

While some main characters in this series reappear in other books, the series can be read in any order and all books stand alone well. Narrator changes with each book.

good

Secrets behind the scenes. How titillating. What's meant to be is meant to be. I love a good
plan and seeing evil get thwarted makes me smile and my heart happy. I voluntarily listened to a free copy of this and am giving an honest review. The narrator did a good job bringing it to life.

Where's the Romance?

I think that short-form fiction is hard to write well. Novellas seem to suffer from one of two maladies: either they have too much story to shoehorn into the limited word real estate or the authors info-dump to bring you up to speed quickly before getting to the actual story. Unfortunately, this book suffered from the first fault. The prologue is entirely believable for a Regency story, though you might feel a bit angry toward the heroine for her choices. The bulk of the book takes place three years later, and my head was spinning trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Let's just say that much transpired in those three years that was completely illogical, and the author didn't explain it well (and even then, only in snippets of explanation here and there, not enough to make coherent sense of the story). I just found it hard to believe that a young Regency woman who was so intimidated by her guardian as to reject her true love forcibly and cruelly would then go on to somehow gather the funds to buy a ship and become the captain of a pirate ship. Even writing that sentence … makes the whole story seem so implausible, and it is! Even if I didn't have the confusion about how all that transpired, the story the author chose to tell doesn't work as a romance, at least for me. We never got to see them initially fall for each other; we didn't get to see their attraction and building romance. We weren't told much about it, let alone shown any of it. That happened even before the prologue. What's left in the bulk of the story is tantamount to a lot of bickering about the past … before they make the seemingly out-of-nowhere decision to go ahead with a future together despite that past. The bickering became quite tedious because, as a reader, I cared little about them or their romance since the author didn’t share enough about them to help me do so. This book was more confusing and annoying than enjoyable. And the narrator didn't help! I listen to a fair amount of Regency romance, and I'm shocked at the number of narrators who do not know how to pronounce the very Regency word “ton.” It actually comes from the French “le Bon Ton” and would be best pronounced with a light French accent. That rarely happens, of course. But the narrator should at least not pronounce it like a weight measure. Every time this narrator said “ton” (which was often), she pronounced it like “tuhn” the weight, not “tahn” which is at least closer to the French, even if not perfectly so.

I liked it!

I received a free copy of this audiobook for an honest review.

Love Dawn Brower; she is a great, entertaining writer. The majority of her stories are historical romance, and that's one of my favorite genres.

My only question is in relation to how Estella was able to accomplish as much as she had. Given the time period and the fact that she was female, how did she manage to get a ship (yes, she found the money to afford one), but with the crew? It was uncommon having a female in a power position (unless she had a fortune and was a widow), much less a female captain. That part was kind of unbelievable. But either way, this was a good story!

As for the narrator, she had an interesting voice. There wasn't that much variety between the character voices, and I wish the pauses between sentences/paragraphs were a little longer than what they were. It's like she'd go from one sentence directly to the next with a very short pause (shorter than normal, in my opinion).