The Wild Child

By: Mary Jo Putney

Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat

Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

I met a lady in the meads /
Full beautiful, a faery's child. /
Her hair was long, her foot was light, /
And her eyes were wild.
(John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci")

Keats' famous poem might be describing Lady Meriel Grahame, the enchanting heroine of this passionate tale set amidst magical gardens. An equally appealing leading man, a thrilling love story, and a rich historical milieu make this novel positively irresistible.

More pagan than lady, Meriel spends her days running barefoot through her English estate, cultivating her flowers and her mystical connection to nature. She is mute and, according to most people, mad. But handsome Dominic Renbourne, who has been sent by his twin to court her, senses in Meriel a kindred spirit. He manages to inspire her trust, and against his better judgement, her passion.

Award-winning New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author Mary Jo Putney lives up to her reputation for creating strong, intelligent characters. Barbara Rosenblat's stimulating performance will awaken all your senses, if not the wild child in you.

©1999 Mary Jo Putney (P)2000 Recorded Books, LLC

Worth reading

An interesting story, good narration, and well-developed characters make for a good experience. I especially enjoyed the interview with the author at the end of the audible version of the book. Well done!

Wonderful!

I loved this story! I have had and listened to The Bartered Bride for years, but I always wanted to listen to the first two stories in this trilogy. I was so excited to get The Wild Child and it didn't disappoint. Sooooo, where is The China Bride??? I hate having a series and missing books from it. I agree that the narrator wasn't that good but I enjoyed this story so much that I overlooked it.

Where are the other titles in the trilogy!

Enjoyed the book very much. Interesting character combinations. I am very disappointed to find out the other two titles in the series are not available on audible. This is becoming a very frustrating pattern to need to check if an entire series is available before starting the first title.

Where is China Bride, the 2nd book?

I enjoy this book a lot. I have had the paper back and hard back covers for years.
I'm not a huge fan of the reader. She does well for the most part, but for some reason she doesn't seem to understand the cues about how someone is speaking. When it says that Mariel said something sharply she still reads it as though Mariel is talking in her sleep. Those kind of mistakes bothered me. And she also made the two brothers sound very excited when they were supposed to be speaking seriously or angrily about certain things. That was rather annoying. She did fine on the normal reading of the story but she did not pay attention to all the details of how someone was supposed to speak.

I also would like to know why the second book "China Bride" was never recorded. That's the story of Kyle and how he finds, obviously, his bride in China. That's a really good story too. The fact that this book was recorded in 2000, and it's now 2018, makes me wonder why the other book has never been recorded. Maybe somebody should get on that. I'd like to finish listening to the story.

The wild child

A very good time I had, reading this book! I loved the main characters and the garden scene descriptions.

Very disappointing

The premise of this book - what happens to a child who has experienced severe trauma and has almost entirely retreated from the world - is full of dynamic potential. However, Putney has written a sappy romance along with ridiculous unbelievable mental responses and development as the character is unveiled - thus completely ditching any real interest the subject could have offered. If you like romance then you will probably like the book because there are some nice descriptions of the gardens and of the main characters' physical beauty.