Audiobook Review - Les Liaisons Dangereuses

At the beginning of the year, I wrote some New Year's Resolutions for this blog. One of the resolutions was that I should try and take more risks and be braver. I know we are only 3 months in but I feel like am going on the right track. Wouldn't you agree?

So, when Leanne from Midas PR emailed me about this, it instantly caught my attention. I can't put my finger on what, but I knew from the tiny press release that this would be something I should take a risk on. I mean, it's just over 2 hours long. What's the worse that could happen, right?

In 18th century Paris, La Marquise de Merteuil and Le Vicomte de Valmont begin a bet. A plan that involves seduction and revenge. Valmont wants to have his wicked way with Madame de Tourvel, while La Marquise de Merteuil wants Valmont to come and seduce young and naive Cécile Volanges, the wife-to-be of the Marquise's former lover. But events soon spiral out of their control and soon, both realise that the heart can not be controlled... 

Before I go any further, I want to stress something. This is not the novel. This is the cast of the sold-out theatre production in London (starring Dominic West, Janet McTeer and Adjoa Andoh to name a few of the actors) reading out letters taken from the Choderlos de Lacios's novel. Letters which are private and reveal private things about the characters. Because of this, the story flows and jumps and we gives an interesting insight to the characters, most of which we are vaguely aware of from either the 1988 movie, Dangerous Liaisons (starring Glenn Close) or 1999's Cruel Intentions (starring Sarah Michelle Geller).

I am going to admit this, I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected. I went into this with very low expectations, and once I found my stride with this, I enjoyed myself. It was weirdly gripping to listen to these private thoughts and go "This isn't going to end well...". Plus, the actors who read seem to have a good amount of fun reading the extracts out.

However, there are a few negatives to this. Because these were letters, it did feel jumpy as you had no idea how much time had past between letters. Was it a few days? A few weeks? Months? Also, there wasn't much gap between where one letter ended and another started. You had to hit the ground running and you had to keep up, which was hard for me as, for a while, names were thrown out and it took me ages to get the names and which voice went with each character.

The ending is something I want to bring up quickly. This is split into five 30ish minute long tracks. But the last track felt a little rushed. I get that the events that happened between the end of track four and the start of track five happen off letter (remember, these are readings from letters) but it felt a little jarring to have a not only such a big jump but also to feel like we missed out on something quite important...

But I did enjoy myself with this and I will be intrigued to see if Audible does something similar to this in the near future...