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Charity Girl

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Charity Girl

By: Georgette Heyer
Narrated by: Hugh Skinner
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Charity Steane has nothing in the world but hope.

Escaping a miserable life under her tyrannical aunt, she decides to take her chances with her estranged grandfather in London. Now it's just a matter of finding him.... And as a 'charity girl' with no dowry and no options, hope can only get her so far.

But with the help of the dashing and kind-hearted Desford and his dearest friend Hetta, it seems like Charity's fortunes might be about to change.

That is, until the surprise appearance of a long-lost relative throws things into chaos and suddenly the three friends find themselves surrounded by blackmail and scandal.

Will their efforts to do right by each other plunge them all into ruin?

©1970 Georgette Heyer (P)2021 Penguin Audio Historical Historical Fiction Regency Regency Romance Romance Heartfelt

Critic reviews

"Absolutely delicious tales of Regency heroes [...] Utter, immersive escapism." (Sophie Kinsella)

"I could mainline Heyer's Regency romances until the end of time and still not get bored [...] Georgette Heyer is perfect lockdown escapism." (India Knight)

"One of my perennial comfort authors. Heyer's books are as incisively witty and quietly subversive as any of Jane Austen's." (Joanne Harris)
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Not one of my favourite Georgette Heyer stories, but main problem was the narrator isn't good at doing the female voices. The voice for Cherry in particular reminded me of Monty Python women - which didn't make for the best listening experience! Will probably avoid this narrator next time.

Ok story, off-putting narration

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This isn’t one of Heyer’s best stories but it’s not bad. However, the narration is very poor. As others have pointed out, the narrator simply cannot do female voices. They descend into pantomime. A lot of the subtlety is lost.
But worse than that, he fairly often places the emphasis on the wrong word in the sentence which suggests he has completely misunderstood the tone and sense of the phrase. Some words like ‘deprecatory’ he completely mangled - it became ‘depreciatory’. Slightly depressing. The vitality of the story was rather flattened by the reading.

Fun story but rotten narration

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Fantastic story as expected for Georgette Heyer but the narrator cannot do voices. When talking in his normal voice or a male character it’s ok, but when voices a lady it is awful, particularly Cherry Steane. Ruins the whole listening experience.

Quality of georgette heyer but poor narrator

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Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the very good
Tale. I was not happy with the
Reading of the tale disappointing voices of the persons in the tale. Wondering how it would be with a lady reader.

Typically excellent Georgette story

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Not the best GH story, but it would have been be vastly improved if the narrator, perfectly competent in all the other roles, had chosen a less nauseating voice to use for the title character

Unfortunate voice for Charity

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