The Demons of Wychwood
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The Demons of Wychwood
Narrated by:
Cornell Collins
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Narrated by:
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Cornell Collins
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By:
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Isobel Starling
About this listen
London 1860
Felix Lazarus -
I suppose you could say I was a voyeur and what I was doing was wrong, criminal even. But I’d suggest that no hot-blooded man could resist a look after finding peepholes behind the walls of Wychwood. Through the peepholes I saw my most secret desires playing out before my eyes. One of the gents I watched was deliciously handsome with brooding stormy eyes and darling black curls. So taken was I that he haunted my dreams. I knew the comely young man only by a number, 27 as none of the queer fellows who attended Wychwood gave their names.
27 didn’t know I existed.
But when I saw how he got into trouble with a violent partner, I didn’t think twice about rushing to his aid. It was in my nature to help him...even if it cost me my job... and my heart.
This book is a gay historical romance with voyeurism, dub-con, upper/lower classes romance, a dastardly villain, revenge, and a HEA.
The Demons of Wychwood was written by Isobel Starling and NO AI was used in it's creation.
The cover art was painted by artist :Emity (instagram: m.emityy/ ) and NO AI was used in the creation of the cover art.
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Felix becomes fascinated by the handsome gentleman he knows only as “number 27”, who Felix has watched with his companion, an older man who dominates him and treats and speaks to him very roughly. Felix doesn’t really understand the dynamic between them, but he’s utterly captivated by 27’s beauty and by the air of desperation he exudes during his encounters with number 45.
A few weeks later, a postal mix-up sees Felix having to hand-deliver a missive to a nob’s house in St. James’s. One of the names on the letter is startlingly familiar – Penheligon. Felix’s sister had been a maid at Penheligon Hall in Devon, and been thrown out when she had become pregnant. Could this Lord Penheligon be connected to that house? Felix’s musings are interrupted by the arrival of a carriage – and the arrival of the man who has haunted his dreams. Who is, according to the address on the letter, Christopher (Kit) Havelock, the Duke of Penheligon.
This is a fairly short story in which the plot boils down to Felix helping Kit to shake free from his step-father’s coercive control and then their working together to deliver a much-deserved comeuppance to the villain of the piece. The pacing is a bit off – the story is slow to start because there’s a lot of exposition in the first couple of chapters and there are a lot of sex scenes and sexual thoughts, which can slow things down. Felix is a likeable character who longs for love without really expecting ever to find it, but Kit is rather two-dimensional and the romance between them is rushed and lacks chemistry. I found it strange that nobody bats an eyelid when Kit – a duke – introduces Felix, clearly a man of the lower classes, as a “dear friend” and there are several instances where the cross-class element of their relationship is just handwaved away. The biggest stretch, however, is in having Kit, whose step-father has been pouring poison into his ear for years, telling him his attraction to men is unnatural and an abomination and that his desire for them is down to some kind of demonic possession that can only be appeased by letting step-daddy pound him into the mattress every so often – could shrug off several years of emotional abuse in just one day.
The narration by Cornell Collins is excellent, of course. His performance is well-paced, and expertly differntiated; he has a good range of character voices and a voice type I always feel is particularly appropriate for historicals. I particularly liked his interpretation of Felix; he rounds out the character extremely well, his rough, London accent marking him clearly as a no-nonsense working man and serving as a good contrast to the softer, cut-glass tones used to portray Kit. The raspy, gravelly growl he gives the villain is the perfect reflection of the man’s horrible personality, and the handful of secondary characters are all clearly differentiated.
The Demons of Wychwood was a quick and entertaining listen, but I’d have liked there to have been more development of the central love story and a slower, more plausible recovery from trauma for Kit. The villain is a real lip-smacking moustache-twirler and I was pleased to see him get his just desserts, but like Kit, he’s a pretty one-note character and could have been more strongly characterised. I enjoyed Cornell Collins’ performance but when it comes to the story, I’d have liked a bit less sex and a bit more plot.
Quick & entertaining, but the romance is underdone
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