DNF Audiobook Review – A Brazen Curiosity: A Regency Cozy (Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries, Book 1) by Lynn Messina, Narrated by Jill Smith (2/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Historical Mystery/Cozy Mystery
Length: 7 hours and 29 minutes
Publisher: Lynn Messina
Release Date: November 19, 2018
ASIN: B07KJX5G23
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 2/5 stars

“Twenty-six-year-old Beatrice Hyde-Clare is far too shy to investigate the suspicious death of a fellow guest in the Lake District. A spinster who lives on the sufferance of her relatives, she would certainly not presume to search the rooms of her host’s son and his friend looking for evidence. Reared in the twin virtues of deference and docility, she would absolutely never think to question the imperious Duke of Kesgrave about anything, let alone how he chose to represent the incident to the local constable.

And yet when she stumbles upon the bludgeoned corpse of poor Mr. Otley in the deserted library of the Skeffingtons’ country house, that’s exactly what she does.”

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries. Right now there are eight books in this series, with another expected to be published later in 2021. I got this as an audiobook from Audible.com.

Audiobook Quality (4/5): The narration here was fine. Smith does a good job with character voices and is pleasant to listen to.

Story (2/5): I got about 40% through this and then returned the audiobook. This was just flat out boring, maybe I am just not a cozy mystery fan. I honestly don’t care who killed the man in the library with a candlestick because I kind of wish whoever did it would have continued his/her murder spree on the rest of the insipient characters in this novel…I did not like this.

Characters (2/5): I actively and intensely disliked the characters in this book. I really disliked how much our heroine is constantly down on herself and how she is treated by the people around her. Additionally, the male lead is pretty much a jerk and constantly insults Beatrice. I think all of this insulting is supposed to come off as cute or funny, but it ended up being more nauseating to me.

Setting (2/5): The setting was a generic regency type of setting. We barely even leave the house with Beatrice, I would have liked to see more of the area Beatrice lived in.

Writing Style (2/5): This took so long to get moving and was so very boring. I thought how awful everyone was to Beatrice all the time was…well…just awful. I didn’t enjoy anything about this book aside from the narrator’s generically pleasant English voice. On a side note I continue to be very pleased that Audible will let you return unfinished audiobooks because I was pretty sad to have spent a credit on this one.

My Summary (2/5): Overall this was not for me, not even a little bit. I thought this was going to be a cute little historical mystery set in the Victorian time frame. It ended up being a boring exercise in watching Beatrice get verbally beat up by everyone around while the reader is supposed to think that it’s cute. As mentioned above, I intensely disliked the characters and the plot was too slow to make up for any of this. I will not be reading future books in the series.