Narrated by Esther Wane

I had reasons for requesting The Resurrection of Lady Ramsleigh for review. Mostly I regret those reasons. I did find a new narrator to enjoy however, so there’s that.

The blurb, in particular, this part of it:

A shipwreck near Castle Black sees Dr. Nicholas Warner risking his life to save a woman from the churning sea. As he pulls her to the safety of the shore, the villagers are stunned by her presence. She is no stranger to them. They identify her as Viola Grantham, Lady Ramsleigh, wife of the recently deceased Lord Percival Ramsleigh… a woman who supposedly died nearly two years earlier. The mystery and scandal surrounding her only draws him in further, adding fuel to the fire of the immediate connection he feels to her.

had me intrigued and I do love a rescue
story. Sometimes when I try a new-to-me author it works and sometimes it
doesn’t. This time it mostly didn’t.

Things that didn’t work, a list:

1. When Viola, Lady Ramsleigh, wakes up from unconsciousness, having
   suffered a head injury and various cuts and bruises in the shipwreck, our hero,
   Dr. Nicholas Warner (OUR HERO!!) tells her, among other things, that he noticed
   she’d borne a child because while she was unconscious he had done a “thorough
   examination” of her. First; what does that even mean? Did he look at her
   cervix? (If so, WHY?) Or is it a(n erroneous) reference to stretch marks (which
   can be caused by other reasons than pregnancy)? And second: Ew, CREEPY dude!
2. The villains are MONSTROUS. They have no redeeming characteristics
   whatsoever and are entirely one-note. Viola’s dad “sold” her to Lord Ramsleigh
   in the full knowledge and with the intention of Lord Ramsleigh bumping her off
   after Viola turned 25 and inherited the trust from her grandfather. Ramsleigh
   and dear old dad agreed to split the trust fund. Ramsleigh had been responsible
   for the deaths of his previous two wives and was a violent abuser who beat and
   raped Viola regularly. Ramsleigh was (and this is mentioned a lot)
   “thrice” Viola’s age and was desperate for an heir so he tasked his nephew,
   Randall, with the job of impregnating Viola. So, Randall brutally raped her
   multiple times too and the first time she became pregnant, pushed her down the
   stairs, bringing about a miscarriage. Randall wanted to remain the heir you
   see. These are not spoilers – this is all laid out by Chapter 6, less than a
   third of the way into the book.
3. I know the monstrosity of the villains was point two but they were
   so terrible, it warrants being point three also. Viola, on becoming pregnant a
   second time, ran away to protect the life of her child. Afterwards, daddy and
   Ramsleigh schemed to have Viola declared dead so they could access (and spend)
   all of her inheritance. When Viola returns, some six months after the death of
   her husband, Randall and daddy scheme to kill her for realsies. Their plan
   involves having Viola regarded by the townsfolk as a witch so they can do what
   needs to be done. A. Witch. Once they find out about the child, well of
   course, he has to go too.
4. The first time our doctor hero and she kiss is after she says “no”
   and he decides that her “no” doesn’t matter. That’s bad enough of course, but
   it was even worse because he knew Viola had been beaten and raped on the
   regular during her marriage.
5. Nicholas calls Viola a “halfwit” when he’s wooing her into
   bed after Viola confesses that the father of her child was Randall and not her
   husband and she thinks he won’t be interested in her once he knows that. I
   mean, I get that he may have meant “don’t be silly Viola, of course not”
   but he called her a halfwit. So romantic.
6. There were inconsistencies in the plot. The most glaring was that at
   one point Viola recalls feeling some attraction to her husband and some
   stirrings of arousal. However, the rest of the text belies this. She cried and
   begged her father not to marry her off to Ramsleigh. The violence began on
   their wedding night. He never made any attempt to please her or had any care
   for her feelings, either physically or emotionally. So where did this supposed
   attraction fit in?
7. The first time Nicholas sexes Viola to orgasm he tells her that his
   ego and pride are well “satisfied”. Because it’s all about him. Not sexy.
8. Nicholas realises he “needs” Viola from their first meeting – when
   she was unconscious. I used to love Sleeping Beauty as a girl but the idea
   of a dude falling in love with a woman when he knows nothing about her apart
   from how she looks is, for the most part, beyond my ability to enjoy now. He
   says that her perfect beauty is the least of her charms but given he’d decided
   she was it for him before he knew what any of them were, it was a little hard
   to believe him.
9. Viola makes a miraculous recovery from severe sexual trauma because
   of the power of Nicholas’s dick. I’m not a fan of the penis as therapy.

It wasn’t all terrible. Nicholas wasn’t
always an ass. There were times when he specifically acknowledged that Viola
needed to be free to make her own choices and where he consciously decides to
give her the space to do just that. I just wish he was like this all the time.

The residents of Castle Black are very
non-conventional. I saw this as more a feature than a bug however. And, if
other parts of the story had not scraped at my brain like fingernails down a
blackboard, I’d no doubt be able to articulate more things I enjoyed. However.

Things that did work, another list:

1. The narration was good. Esther Wane is also new-to-me and I’ll
   definitely listen to her again, provided the author is different. I’m most
   probably done with books by Ms. Bowlin. (I did pick up an ebook of hers for free
   today though so maybe I’ll give her another try.)
2. Ms. Wane was clearly a native Brit and was able to portray various
   English accents and the couple of Scottish accents the story required. Having
   had some recent experience with the opposite, this was a welcome relief.
3. The narration put me in mind of Mary Jane Wells somewhat. Esther
   Wane is clearly a different person but there were pleasing similarities in the
   performance. There were a couple of mispronounced words and sometimes the tone
   didn’t quite match the text but for the most part, Ms. Wane did a great job with
   less-than-ideal material.

The Resurrection of Lady Ramsleigh is, as I write this, sitting on a 4.27 average rating at Goodreads
so plenty of people obviously liked the book. I did not.