The Matchmaker’s Lonely Heart (Audible) – Nancy Campbell Allen, Narrator – Dannielle Cohen
An enjoyable historical fiction romance/detective novel. Amelie Hampton, orphaned daughter from the wrong branch of the well-regarded, well-born Hamptons, lives in a rooming house owned by her Aunt Sallie, who raised Amelie and her two cousins after each lost their parents. They all work for Aunt Sallie’s “Marriage Gazette,” a newspaper with a lonely hearts column and ads for those interested in marriage. When she decides to follow a couple she’s advised to spend time together over the woman’s mother’s objections, she runs into Detective Michael Baker, literally, as he is interested in the male half of the couple, Harold Radcliffe. He convinced Amelie to help him out when he learns Mr. Radcliffe is in her book group and a new female “detective” who should not be involved but impresses the official detective with her skills is born. This is an engaging version of the story with fun characters and scenarios and some creative plot twists. A lot of fun with a good narrator.
To Capture His Heart (Matchmakers #2) (Same author and narrator)
Having found the first entry in this three book (so far) series, “The Matchmaker’s Lonely Heart,” well worth my time, I’m happy to also recommend To Capture His Heart. Each novel centers on one of three female cousins who are very close. In fact they live in the same boarding house, owned by their unmarried businesswoman Aunt Sally. They are from the “wrong side” of a good family. It is the late 1880s and they are blessed to have options and ambitions.
In To Capture his Heart, Eve is hired to photograph an event at a country estate. She is highly sought after and a police detective acquaintance, son of the host, begs her to come and pretend to be his love interest to stave off the single women sure to be there. Along with her very young assistant, who we met in the first novel and a mobile dark room, she rearranges her schedule. Little does she know, initially, that her detective friend has an enemy and they are all in danger. Unsettling things happen and eventually deaths happen. Allen spins a great yarn, with mysteries, romance and historical
Protecting Her Heart (Matchmaker #3) (Same Author and Narrator)
Having read the first two entries in this series, I knew I needed to see Charlotte, the third cousin, find her way in the world. All of the matchmaker books focus on women becoming more independent and following their own interests while remaining conventional in the sense that they also focus on marriage and children. Meanwhile, they also are financially secure and some make wealthy matches. In Protecting her Heart, Charlotte has finished medical school in Philadelphia. (The cousins are British and live in London). She is working in a clinic in New York City when she received a disturbing letter from her father, who is terminally ill. He tells her he has concerns about how her mother died twenty years earlier.
Charlotte heads home immediately and, after facing some sad things, some scary things and some uppity former friends of her mother, she and her best friend, the Director of London’s police force and son of a Member of Parliament, get together with her cousins and their husbands and various friends we’ve met before to figure out whether her mother was murdered. People get hurt. People get killed. Of course! Enjoyed a lot.
They Called me Bookworm 