Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle by Georgette Heyer

I know, I know. What is a reasonable girl with pretensions to good taste doing reading generic Regency romance novels? Well, I have a very bad answer to that. I recently watched BBC's 2004 adaptation of North and South (at first reluctantly since I hate Elizabeth Gaskell), but I was completely enchanted by Richard Armitage's amazing acting (and gorgeous voice and gorgeous face and gorgeous hair etc, etc, I won't bore you with the details). I found out that he narrated the audiobooks of a couple of Georgette Heyer novels, and I could not resist the prospect of listening to that amazing voice some more. So really, this is the review of the abridged audiobook version, which can be found here. Anyways, the narration does not disappoint, I was discreetly swooning while listening to it, Richard Armitage's voice is absolutely stunning and very expressive (he really is a very good actor). And the book itself is actually pretty nice, it's a fun read, it's definitely not taxing, and is very entertaining and humorous. I don't really do a lot of shamelessly indulgent reading, so it was a nice change. Heyer is actually known for her historical accuracy, and I enjoyed the descriptions of life, manners, and culture, but I'm afraid a great deal of it got cut for this version, and I'm not interested enough to go seek out the full one. I actually also genuinely enjoyed the main character (who is not the eponymous Sylvester but Phoebe Marlow), she's a very Austen-like heroine, because she insists on confronting life on her own terms and has a fairly dazzling wit. I also detect more than a hint of parody of the genre itself, as Phoebe continues falling into endless scrapes that seem to resemble one another a great deal, until it all becomes one huge and ridiculous endlessly repeating cycle. But mostly, Richard Armitage's voice is the main hero here. For those who want to listen to Richard Armitage's voice for hours on end (highly recommended) and feel like eschewing Regency romance, he recently did the unabridged version of David Copperfield. I didn't listen to it only because I have already once ploughed through that doorstopper, and not even that voice can entice me back.