Thank you for Listening
Two audio book readers, an author’s dying wish, hidden identities and that one night in Vegas…
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I’m writing this during that weird little gap between round one and the final found of the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards. (I know, I know, it’s like a day without definition, but we’re all going to make it though this gray and shapeless void, I swear!)
If you’re consuming romance at the rate I do, you have multiple recommendation sources, and the long list of Goodreads awardees is one of mine, which is how I landed on this title. Author Julia Whelan is a lauded audiobook narrator and actress, so those were more votes in favor of opening this book. Then there’s the irresistible cover and oodles of love from the reading community. So many positive Goodreads reviews! My Magic Eight Ball said, “Outlook good.”
I started this one out with a good attitude! I can like what everyone else likes, right? Wrong. (Again.) Here is another book about which I disagree with mostly everybody. Sometimes it’s lonely on my personal Romance Planet, but I’m writing about it anyway. If you loved this book, don’t let me pooh-pooh it! Stop reading my review here.
This book was crammed with so, so much that my summary seems to keep getting longer with each revision pass of this review. Try and bear with me. Sewanee, the heroine is a former actress and current audiobook narrator. Meanwhile, Sewanee’s got tons of side stories, so get out your notebooks:
a chip on her shoulder about the entire romance genre
a sudden lack of funding for her grandmother’s assisted living facility, for which she must pay
an absent mom with agendas but not presence
a shitty dad (Oh yeah, Grandma’s money’s all gone.)
an actress-model best friend who’s here to remind us of the superficiality of Hollywood
Sewanee’s audiobook coworkers and that whole world
the accident that left Sewanee disfigured, which haunts her present moment with memories and trauma.
a heap of cash if she’ll record one certain author’s romance novel.
Sewanee is an eye-patch wearing super babe. Her life’s generally in order, but she’s a lock box. She gets close to no one anymore. Because it works better that way. And also…the past.
Like me, you may wonder how to say her name.
“By the way, this is my best friend, Sewanee.”
“Shauney?“
“No, SWAH-nee. Like swan the bird and knee the joint.”
Swan hooks up with a hot guy in Vegas—not her usual move, but why not?!?—and then it’s back to real life. Not too long after, we meet Brock, the love interest, who is burdened by his own hefty waste basket of soul-trash. Honestly, I forget what his issues were because I was too busy keeping up with all the side-stories.
At the risk of not plot spoiling everything, I’ll sum up by saying this novel is written heavily in the epistolary format, meaning that we readers are drug through lengthy, meandering text threads between the two main characters that sounded more like flirting middle schoolers instead of grown-ass adults.
At points the two MCs even exchanged odd sentences like that once they’d finally met. I wondered how they could stand the sound of that strange gobbledygook coming out of their own mouths, but I suppose they were endearing themselves to one another. Dorkishness unites! And don’t I know it—I’m a card-carrying member. But even so, their verbal utterances and typed nonsense weren’t working for me.
All of it added up to lead me to care less and less about their eventual connection. I pounded my head against my Kindle, then resolved to skim faster and faster, racing toward the explosive love scene, the grand finale! A hearty bounce on the bed! The Big Bang!
It never happens! After an entire book of teasing, I’d give this about a two chili pepper🌶🌶 rating. I will hand it to Whelan, that I did finish, and since I’ve been DNFing like crazy, this is saying something. Consider myself teased.
Photo by buddhi jayaweera on Unsplash
Finally, I’ll put this out there. Is Sewanee’s name a nod to the old story about the ugly duckling transforming into a swan? It hardly seems accidental, and if so, is that a “good” thing?
