I have recently taken a liking to non-fiction reads and this one really taught me a lot. I didn’t realize how interesting this topic was until I finished reading and had to sit with what I had just learned. I definitely would read more from this author.

🎧Audiobook Review🎧

Happy Saturday! Ready for a scandalous book review?

First off, thanks to @netgalley and @tantoraudio for the ALC of The Scandalous Hamiltons.

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past few years, then you’ve heard of the musical Hamilton and the biography it’s based upon. I’ll just say I’m a HUGE FAN. So, when I saw this audiobook I was intrigued.

Fast forward 100 years and this book is about Alexander Hamilton’s great-grandson Robert Ray Hamilton. I don’t think Ray Hamilton was as smart as his great-grandfather because he was swindled by a female con-artist and that drama is like a modern-day celebrity reality show!

If you want to read a truly scandalous book involving swindling, baby farms, bigamy, prostitution, violence and sex…and it’s all true!! Here’s your book!

This was truly entertaining and I thought the narrator did a great job.

I have been really enjoying historical true crime, and this was an excellent book. Robert Ray Hamilton, who came from an illustrious family, ends up splashed across tabloids around the world when his wife Evangeline is put on trial for stabbing their baby’s nurse.

This book deals not only with the event that caused such salacious headlines, but also with what happened to the couple and their child after. It was really interesting learning how a man who had everything had fallen for the charms of a woman who saw an opportunity to better herself and took it with both hands. I also thought that the book provided a good “slice of life”, giving a glimpse of how people existed in the late 1800s.

I enjoyed the narrator of the audiobook. He had a lovely, well modulated voice and a good pace. I’m not particularly skilled at listening to audio, so I definitely appreciate an easy listening narrator. I also liked the different inflections he put on for the voices and he was consistent with how he read Evangeline’s words in particular, giving a feminine impression without resorting to verbal caricatures.

A cross over book which is likely to interest people who read true crime and history.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bill Shaffer for this audio-ARC in exchange for my honest feedback and review.

Before I read this book I had not heard of Robert Ray Hamilton. This tawdry story of lies, sex, deceit was very interesting. If you have an interest in history especially those lesser known historical figures of famous families this is the read for you! I would love to learn more about the Hamilton family now. I loved this narrator, they made the story come to life and this story flew by.

While this story was interesting if you’re a history buff, I found the storytelling to be very lacking. It was dry, quite boring, and more like a list of facts than an actual story. I will admit to preferring my history in a more narrative format and this was not up to par.

This book, for me, was a solid 3 stars. It was interesting, but not one I feel I will read again. It was enjoyable to listen to while I was doing housework, but not something that was so interesting that I stopped what I was doing to pay complete attention.

3.5 stars

A true crime case before true crime was a thing, and case reporting was in its infancy. The public was immediately gripped showing society’s fascination with crime cases had been happening since the beginning. After a day of socializing and drinking a woman stabs her friend what actually happened before, during, and after is a he said, she said, they said that gets played out in court. To make things more interesting the whole thing involves the descendant of a founding father only strengthening the public’s obsession with the case and all the drama surrounding it that involved for them just the murder including validity of her marriages, and paternity and even maternity of children. Vintage true crime is one of my favorite things because the things people were allowed to say, do, and get away with always blows my mind. This was really interesting and I liked watching all the court drama, and the events that followed play out.

*a copy of this book was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

When will I learn? Rhetorical. The blurb says it all: Grifter, disgraced descendant, & tabloid journalism. What's missing: numerous affairs, abortions, and pay-offs. This was just okay for me. I was disappointed that I didn't realize Scandalous was going to dominate in this fashion. I expected some immortality mixed with dirty politics.

The narration was fine.

Thank you NetGalley and Tantor Audio for accepting my request to read and review The Scandalous Hamiltons.

I was given the opportunity to listen to this book by the publisher via Net Galley. The narrator sounded similar to a typical History Channel commentator, There were certainly interesting aspects of the story, but it wasn't tied together as cohesively as I would have liked.

The Scandalous Hamiltons hooked me from the beginning! It tells the story of Robert Ray Hamilton (great grandson of Alexander) and his wife Eva. The author calls the Hamilton family the Kennedy's of the Gilded Age and boy did they bring the drama!

Ray and Eva had an atypical relationship to say the least. Their story includes buying babies, probable bigamy, stabbing, affairs, mysterious death and more. It was incredible to hear what people could get away with in that time period and the things they had to live with in the day to day.

I really appreciate the time that must have gone into researching this book. The details- especially the reading of actual court documents- really bring the story to life and let us get a sense of who these people were. I had never heard of Ray Hamilton and his story prior to this book but it is one I will not forget!

I tend to read a lot of historical fiction, so decided to take this small detour and listen to something that was historical nonfiction. It wasn’t really a leap, as this tale was as full of drama and intrigue as its fictional counterparts!
I found the story interesting, not just the information about this generation of Hamiltons, which I did not know, but also the history about the rise of tabloid journalism.
The one thing I was not fond of was the narrator. His voice was quite monotonous and he sounded bored 90% of the time. It reminded me of when my grandfather used to read newspaper articles to me. It almost sounded like he was just trying too hard to sound “serious.”
Thank you to #NetGalley and #TantorAudio for the ALC in exchange for my honest opinions. 3.5 stars

The scandalous Hamiltons was interesting, and featured a bunch of stuff I had never known anything about. But it was very short, and didn't go into enough detail - my guess is because there wasn't enough information available. I finished this one a few weeks ago and I barely remember most of it. But it was very entertaining and I enjoyed the narrator for the audiobook quite a bit!

Gilded Age scandal involving the defendant of Alexander Hamilton, sign me up immediately. The synopsis sounded so wild I knew I needed to pick it up, and this story was even wilder than the synopsis described. Big thank you to NetGalleyand Tantor audio for granting me access to the audio book in exchange for an honest review.

This story is wild, full of twists and turns worthy of a period melodrama. At the same time, Shaffer finds a way to humanize the key players in this narrative beyond the pages of newspapers and court documents. Beyond that he had a real back for weaving together multiple stories for multiple players across the country in a way that flowed smoothly and kept my interest.

The narrator on this was solid, he had the right voice to feel knowledgeable but also empathetic to the lives he was giving voice to in a way that immediately put me at ease, I often struggle with audiobooks because of the narrators but I will definitely pick up another voiced by Colacci

I quite enjoyed this story of the sScadslous Hamilton .. Robert Ra was the great grandson of Alexander Hamilton. Ray was raised with all the He worked at a very prestigious law firm in New York City but also was a state legislatorfiner. He slit his time between places and would visit his prostitute on weekend between appointments. The prostitute Evangeline.Mann was a common law wife but it didn’t keep her from trying to trap Ray into marriage, Eva always trying to better herself by trying to find someone richer. When she got her nails in Ray she told him she was pregnant. Ray couldn’t let the scandal become news in NewYork it would ruin him so he told Eva they had to go to California to be married. Eva’s common law husband and his new girlfriend traveled to California too. I hadn’t heard about any of this before I read the book. It was filled with scandalous tales.. made me want to google search to learn more.. you will need to read the book to see where this goes in Evas unraveling. Thanks to #NetGalley, #Bill Schafer, publisher, #TheScdalousHamiltons .for giving me an opportunity to review early in exchange for my honest opinion.

Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley and Tantor Audio in exchange for an honest review.

Shaffer provides readers with a compiled account of Robert Ray Hamilton (a descendant of Alexander Hamilton) and a woman named Evangeline that had the Gilded Age following the tabloids for all the juicy gossip. This is both a historical account of Ray and Eva along with a glimpse of how the wider access to newspapers helped to provide societal gossip on a larger scale. Oh, and a brief mention about baby farms and how midwifes made money on selling unwanted infants without asking questions about why someone would want to buy a baby.

Even though I found Ray and Eva to be not that interesting, the overall story was intriguing. This is a fairly quick read and an interesting look into a span of American history that helped to shape the media format of today.

David Colacci does a good job with the audiobook though at times I felt that both Colacci's performance and the narrative fell into the territory of dry and dull nonfiction.