Simply Unforgettable (Simply Quartet #1) by Mary Balogh (audiobook) – Narrated by Rosalyn Landor

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They meet in a ferocious snowstorm. She is a young teacher with a secret past. He is the cool, black-caped stranger who unexpectedly comes to her rescue. Between these two unlikely strangers, desire is instantaneous…and utterly impossible to resist.

Stranded together in a rustic country inn, Lucius Marshall, who is the Viscount Sinclair, and Frances Allard share a night of glorious, unforgettable passion. But Frances knows her place, and it is far from the privileged world of the sensual aristocrat. Due to begin her teaching position at Miss Martin’s School in Bath, Frances must try to forget that one extraordinary night – and the man who touched her with such exquisite tenderness and abandon.

But Frances cannot hide forever. And when fate once again throws them together, Lucius refuses to take no for an answer. If Frances will not be his wife, he will make her his mistress. So begins an odyssey fraught with intrigue, one that defies propriety and shocks the straitlaced ton. For Lucius’s passionate, single-minded pursuit is about to force Frances to give up all her secrets – except one – to win the heart of the man she already loves.

Rating: Narration – A; Content – B

Mary Balogh’s Simply series, in which the heroines are four teachers working at a select school for young ladies in Bath, was originally recorded in the mid-late 2000s, but has been unavailable for some years and was never – as far as I know – made available digitally. After years of wishing on my part – and that of a number of fellow Balogh/Landor audiobook enthusiasts – these recordings are at last being re-released, and I have to say a big and public “Thank You” to Tantor for making them available once more.

Simply Unforgettable opens as Frances Allard is travelling back to Miss Martin’s School in Bath following the Christmas holiday she has spent with her great aunts. The typically English non-White Christmas is followed by a sudden snowstorm during which her somewhat elderly, lumbering coach is overtaken by a much smarter vehicle carrying a fashionable gentleman whose disregard for the safety of others infuriates Frances to no small degree. When both coaches are forced to stop, Frances makes her feelings on the matter very clear to the occupant, an irritable, somewhat abrasive man who introduces himself as Lucius Marshall. They immediately rub each other up the wrong way; he thinks she’s a harpy, she thinks he’s an arrogant arse, but they recognise that the bad weather isn’t going to suddenly disappear and that they need to seek shelter.

You can read the rest of this review at AudioGals.