Marvelous Audiobook By Molly Greeley cover art

Marvelous

A Novel

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Marvelous

By: Molly Greeley
Narrated by: Ell Potter
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $25.19

Buy for $25.19

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

"Enchanting. Molly Greeley has pulled off a piece of magic to tell a dazzling love story about the outcast's ache to be cared for and belong. This book broke my heart and put it back together again."—Allison Epstein, author of A Tip for the Hangman

A mesmerizing novel set in the French royal court of Catherine de’ Medici during the Renaissance, which recreates the touching and surprising true story behind the Beauty and the Beast legend, from the acclaimed author of The Clergyman’s Wife and The Heiress.

1547: Pedro Gonzales, a young boy living on the island of Tenerife, understands that he is different from the other children in his village. He is mercilessly ridiculed for the hair covering his body from head to toe. When he is kidnapped off the beach near his home, he finds himself delivered by a slave broker into the dangerous and glamorous world of France’s royal court. There “Monsieur Sauvage,” as he is known, learns French, literature, and sword fighting, becoming an attendant to the French King Henri II and a particular favorite of his queen, the formidable Catherine de’ Medici. Queen Catherine considers herself a collector of unusual people and is fascinated by Pedro…and determined to find him a bride.

Catherine Raffelin is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl whose merchant father has fallen on hard times and offers up his daughter to Queen Catherine. The queen will pay his debts, and his daughter will marry Monsieur Sauvage.

Catherine meets Pedro for the first time on their wedding day. Barely recovered from the shock of her father’s betrayal, she soon finds herself christened “Madame Sauvage” by the royal courtiers, and must learn to navigate this strange new world, and the unusual man who is now her husband.

Gorgeously written, heartbreaking and hopeful, Marvelous is the portrait of a marriage, the story of a remarkable, resilient family, and an unforgettable reimaging of one of the world’s most beloved fairy tales.

"A richly detailed and imaginative novel. Readers will relish Greeley's emotionally potent tale."—Booklist

©2023 Molly Greeley (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers
Biographical Fiction Fiction Gothic Renaissance Royalty Marriage France Feel-Good Heartfelt Scary Wedding King
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about Marvelous

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    13
  • 4 Stars
    9
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    17
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    12
  • 4 Stars
    7
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Ear Candy

Prose, rich as poetry, images real enough to touch or smell, emotions soar, swim seaweed strewn depths or crawl, bloody kneed, across polished marble floors sparkling with shards and miniscule fragments of mouth blown crystal stemwear.
An unusual, lonely boy lands in a rarefied world where he must swallow his masculine pride to survive. His boyhood friend and their patron, drive plot revealing secrets.
His beautiful wife, a coddled only daughter of wealth, finds herself bartered to a stranger beast. They reside, captive in castles.
A whole new more historic take on an all too familiar tale but this time from the inside of two tenacious lovers. Their hopes, fears, acute mental gymnastics and perceptions of depth and complexity banter back and forth as the story staggers around in time.
Well worth the listen.
Spoiler alert, have tissues handy.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating perspective

While clearly fictional, this story is utterly compelling and believable, offering a compassionate viewpoint of what life might like for the characters in the story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Marvelous!

Loved this story. Narrator is my favorite to listen to. I will listen to this one again.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Exquisite, Lovely, Heartbreaking—yes—Marvelous

This book utterly wrecked me, time and time again, the audio is absolutely exquisite. I’ve been a Molly fan since her first book, and I tell you—it’s so amazing to see an author’s talent grow and grow and grow. This is Molly’s best book yet, as she discovered a story, possibly the story behind the Beauty and the Beast legend. She discovered it, and she plumbed it, ever deeper and deeper still, meticulously (beautifully) picking away at my heart. Yes, it’s a story of a family that existed, fed and kept alive by the expansiveness, curiosity, and, frankly, the need for always bigger and better that drives kings and queens and dukes and our own oligarchs.

But ultimately, this is the story of a heart. A live, beating heart, a few of them. A boy’s heart. A lover’s heart. A daughter’s heart. A mother’s heart. Oh, my heart! It kept me up past my bedtime and made me late!

We can see, with our modern eyes, the horror of the treatment. Hopefully we can examine our own selves, too. Renaissance France hasn’t felt this real to me in a very long time. Well done!🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Narration is French Kiss perfection.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Writing a little flowery for my taste

The story is OK but overly embellished but perhaps it’s just my preference for tight editing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful