Heirs and Graces

Enjoyable light murder mystery

I've really enjoyed this series. This installment wasn't my favorite, but it was nice. There was a nice twist at the end.. but, it felt like there was a long build up, but the ending was rather abrupt.

I was also cooling a bit on the romance between Georgie and Darcy. Darcy was around more, but I didn't feel the spark between them as much as I had in other books.

This series has been one of my favorites. I look forward to each installment.. but this one, seemed just a bit off the mark to me. Yes, I enjoyed it! It was just not quite as good as some of the other installments.

The narrator does a great job.

Yes, I'd recommend it, just read the installments in order.

16 of 17 people found this review helpful

Delightful Series

This isn't the series to go to if you want to expand your mind. But, if you'd like a well-crafted light (and I do mean light) mystery with an easy-to-listen-to narrator, this is the one. Start at the beginning and just go through them. Once in a while this kind of book is a nice break. Be warned. It's a cupcake, not a meal.

By the way ... this is a series you can share with your mom, grandma and great aunt. It's all just good, clean fun.

The narrator, Katherine Kellgren, really needs a shout out. Her work is terrific. She makes Georgie come to life.

27 of 31 people found this review helpful

Fun! Again!

Can we talk about what a wonderful narrator Katherine Kellgren is? She just never drops the ball. Ever. Each recurring character is precisely the same as they have been in each previous book.

I love this series. It's pure historical fun. Heirs and Graces has a neat twist ending (with Georgie ending up rescued by someone other than Darcy, hooray!), and delightful caricatures of British nobility.

13 of 15 people found this review helpful

Almost ruined by narration

This is a good story almost ruined by narration. Katherine Kellgren used to be a good narrator, but in recent years she has gone over the top dramatically trying to act out the events in the books she reads and giving the characters exaggerated accents. In Nora Robert's Dark Witch and Rick Riordan's Kane Chronicles she actually ends up shouting most of the lines! Some of those dramatics show up in this book, too. She does a much better job on the early books in this series.

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

Heir Again

Georgie discovers another body. With all the practice she's had, it is no wonder that she is getting better at examining the crime scene. The description of the house and estate rival the interactions of Georgie and the other characters.

Katherine Kellgren is a splendid narrator who brings each character to life and makes it so enjoyable to listen to the story.

I am waiting with great interest to follow Georgie's next adventure.

9 of 11 people found this review helpful

Very Enjoyable Listening Experience.

What did you love best about Heirs and Graces?

Rhy Bowen does and amazing job of spinning a mystery around a Royal Family. With all the characters in the story, you can not pinpoint who did the deed. Great Ending to the story!!

What did you like best about this story?

The story was great, the voices that Katherine Kellgren added put the book over the top.

What does Katherine Kellgren bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

She brought believable accents and dialects that would have been lacking had you just read the written word.

9 of 11 people found this review helpful

Great Author and Entertaining Story

I listen to several different genres and Rhys Bowen's books rank up there with my favorites. Rhys makes her characters come to life for her readers and they have very distinct personalities. I love the chemistry between Georgie and Darcy! Queenie is such a disaster it's hilarious! Georgie's Granddad is a loveable character and one of my favorites. He always pulls through for Georgie! I love the suspense, mystery, romance, and comedy that Rhys incorporates into her books. I can't wait for the next one.

9 of 11 people found this review helpful

LOVED IT! Best of the series so far!!!!!

I have loved every single book in this series about Lady Georgiana Rannoch, an impoverished distant cousin of the queen, whose life is a constant search for finding a secure place somewhere. Her peculiar circumstances, of being a "royal" but without any money or training for a career, has left her open to having to go to new places, where she meets people and gets herself into situations where intrigue and murders occur. Naturally, she is the clever one who winds up solving the mysteries.

This was the absolute best in the series so far--and the wait was worth it! Katherine Kellgren, the most talented narrator, has outdone herself with the amazing versatility she shows for creating different voices. I have never "read" one of the books in this series (always listened to these recordings of them) but cannot imagine doing so, after listening to Kellgren's delightful readings of them. There are just not enough superlatives available to describe the range of her vocal skills. The stories are loads of fun--they are genuine mysteries, but with a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) mockery of the aristocracy, laugh-out-loud funny much of the time, and genuinely quite addictive! I recall that the first of the series I ever read, I chose with some skepticism, since that does not sound like the typical books I read--but by the end of the first chapter of the first book, I was a confirmed follower of Rhys Bowen's Lady Georgiana series. The author, the narrator and the uncommonly clever writing work together in a way that many recorded books do not.

In this book, Georgiana goes to a lush mansion with Lady Edwina, a wealthy duchess with great pretensions, to help her teach a long-missing grandson how to behave properly in his new place in society. However, when the young Australian outback, sheep-farming youth meets his royal and very pompous, grandiose grandmother--the outrageous fun begins--along with the murder.

If you choose to listen to this book--it would be wise (and fun) for you to begin at the beginning of the series. However, it would be fine to begin with this one--I believe it could be a great stand-alone book on its own.

12 of 16 people found this review helpful

Scarce and predictable action, not enough Darcy.

Very little happens, and what does happen is accidental rather than arising from the innate motives of a character. Therefore as the plot unfolds there is no character development and thus not much interest. Sadly, Darcy is relegated to an incidental character not much involved in plot development. This is the least interesting of the series.

8 of 11 people found this review helpful

Such a hoot!

This book was hilarious it made me laugh out loud while driving down the road other drivers must have thought I was crazy!

Georgiana is staying at Kingsdowne Place to help out the family when they find a new heir for the Dukedom unfortunately for this upper crust family the heir apparent is an Aussie who has been raised as a rancher not as a Duke, plus the current Duke Cedric is a jerk who would rather have everyone gone and adopt one of his male playthings than put up with an interloper or anyone else in the family. Unfortunately for the Duke things don’t go well for him at all.

The mystery was a good one I didn’t guess who had done it. And the cast of characters and I do mean characters are all fabulous; you have Princess Charlotte who constantly wants to have a séance, her sister Vivienne who is a highly sexual being and turns everything into innuendo, The Dowager Duchess who is as upper crust as they come, her daughter Irenee who just whines a lot and her two incorrigible children. Plus we have, as Georgiana called them, the Starlings who are Cedric’s companions and possibly his lovers. And of course we have Georgiana’s boyfriend Darcy and her best friend Belinda shows up hoping to catch the new duke in her snares.

Katherine Kellgren’s narration was as always Amazing. I kind of feel sorry for anyone else in an Audie category that is up against Katherine Kellgren because she is so amazing. There are so many characters in this book with very different accents and each and every person sounds different and is distinct. Some of the accents in this book were; high brow English, Australian, cockney, Irish, male and female, kids and grown-ups all done absolutely flawlessly. No other book in the mystery category had this many accents and characters done so well.

This was a fun book and a cute story; I’ve only read the first book in this series and wasn’t confused at all so this one could easily be read as a standalone. This is a very fun historical cozy I highly recommend this series.

4 ½ Stars

3 of 4 people found this review helpful