Gentleman Jim by Mimi Matthews

This book was a disappointment, which surprised me given that I’ve found several of Matthews’ other books very pleasant (The Matrimonial Advertisement, The Siren of Sussex, and The Work of Art).

The blurb promised some amount of mystery, danger, and revenge; however, I found the whole thing so predictable that I was just waiting for each plot point to arrive so I could get through the story. The biggest mystery ended up being why this version of the cover featured a dark-haired man!

I don’t want to share spoilers, so I’ll avoid specifics and just note that in addition to a dull plot I found the characters incredibly flat and cookie-cutter: an earnest, loyal woman; a mysterious, ambitious viscount; a nasty rival; a grandfather with questionable motives; a friend with zero personality; and so on. I can generally forgive a predictable plot if it has interesting characters, and I can forgive shallow or Pollyanna-ish characters if they’re thrown into an intriguing plot, but this really let me down with nothing to dig into.

Audiobook Review

I’m adding a separate note about the audiobook format — in part because I wonder if the format skewed my experience of the book, but also because there were some elements I specifically wanted to mention. I was pleased with Alex Wyndham’s work on the dialogue and character voices. That said, the rest of the narration was really tedious, with repetitive prosody for almost every single sentence. It kind of killed my interest by the end and had the tendency to make me zone out while listening. If you’re still interested in this story, I’d recommend picking up the book version.