Narrated by Amanda Ronconi

What a romp! Sadie Hutchins is assistant director of the Kentucky Tourism Commission, just assuming the promotion to director when her boss retires. She has worked with this wacky group of folks for several years, and it is a predictable, enjoyable job until a state commissioner hires an outsider for the director’s job instead. Josh Vaughn learns about the position opening from an old fraternity brother, and moves to Kentucky from Atlanta when he’s told he has the director’s job.

The book is a delightful mix of Chick Lit and Romance – told in first person from Sadie’s POV. The story is both about Sadie’s career and about the burgeoning relationship between Josh and Sadie. The outgoing director decides to have the two candidates compete for the job by producing a campaign that the public votes on, with the winner becoming the new director and the loser being the assistant. Sadie’s coworkers are diabolical and relentless in their pranks to help and hinder the two. It’s a nice short read that left me laughing out loud and still feeling the emotion between the two, and indeed between other characters as well. The ending was a teensy bit finagled, but it worked.

Amanda Ronconi does an excellent job with the story – her Kentucky accents are subtle
and wonderful and real, as the accent plays a key part in the story. She differentiates the characters well with pitch, accent and tone. This is my second time to enjoy a Harper/Ronconi collaboration and it works well – her delivery of Harper’s unique style is dry and witty. There were two or three times I experienced a weird tech glitch, when there were two lines being spoken at once – that’s a new problem I haven’t heard before. It was probably 3 or 4 seconds long each time. How can that even happen, I wonder?

This is one of those times where a letter grade is difficult to assign. For narration, no question: an A read. For story, to compare it to other short, contemporary romantic comedies, it gets a solid A; to compare it in general to all my other 5-star/A grade romance favorites, it’s more a 4-star/B – I’ll compromise with a B+, to indicate I really liked it.

Melinda

Narration: A

Book Content: B+

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in, only at the end really

Violence: None

Genre: Chick Lit/Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Audible, Inc.