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Unabridged Digital Audiobook
Runtime: 10 hours 53 minutes
Read by Sarah Nichols
In Jane Austen’s Regency novels, the characters often spend much of the story fretting about what’s right and proper. And in the audio edition of the second Rosalind Thorne novel, A Purely Private Matter, author Darcie Wilde takes that oh-so-proper period drama and blends in a little bit of mystery.
This perfectly polite whodunit follows subtle sleuth for hire Rosalind Thorne on her latest case. Though she lost her standing in society due to her parents’ failings, Rosalind has found her own place as a “useful woman” who can quietly help women with difficult situations. Her current client is Margaretta Seymore, a well-known poetess whose husband has accused her of having an affair with actor Fletcher Cavendish. But the case gets even more complicated when Cavendish is found stabbed to death in his dressing room. And as the lovesick women of London mourn the famed actor, Rosalind gets caught up in the murder case.
A Purely Private Matter seeks to mix the romance and intrigue of a cozy mystery with the societal structures and scandal of Jane Austen’s classics.
As in Austen’s novels, almost everything here seems to revolve around propriety and respectability. The characters are all caught up in a tangled web of family drama, gossip, scandal, and deep, dark secrets. Their greatest concern is with their title and influence—and one family seems so caught up in the title of a dying man that they could just be willing to kill to get it.
Even Rosalind herself isn’t impervious to the issues of title and status. Had it not been for her family and their mistakes, she could have settled into a comfortable marriage with a man of wealth. Instead, she works to help members of the society that has all but turned its back on her—and she’s unable to marry the man that she once loved. And should more of her family’s secrets come out, she could even lose the life that she’s been able to create for herself.
Meanwhile, though the twisted tales of scandal among the rich and influential members of society are sometimes intriguing, the story sometimes gets a little too caught up in the family drama—to the point that it can be confusing to those who haven’t studied the time period in depth. And the prim and proper tone—and the matching narration—do sometimes feel a bit too dry.
If you enjoy the drama of Jane Austen’s classics, you’ll at least enjoy the novelty of A Purely Private Matter. But, with its tangled connections and sometimes stuffy tone, it lacks Austen’s wit and charm.
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