Narrated by Madison Vaughn

This is another book I’d already read and enjoyed that I had to hear on audio! It’s like comfort food, macaroni & cheese – you know you’ll enjoy it and feel good at the end. Narrator Madison Vaughn brings a nice, cynical tone to the characters that fits them to a t. It’s filled with Crusie’s trademark witty banter, and Vaughn made me laugh out loud with Nick’s secretary Christine’s dialogue.

It’s an “opposites attract” sort of theme, along the lines of Dharma and Greg. Tess was raised on a commune by hippie parents. She continues their traditions by working as a teacher at a nonprofit foundation that runs a tutoring program for disadvantaged children, and also by protesting the ills of the world, and in general trying to fix everyone and everything. Living according to her principals, she shops at thrift stores, lives in a low-income area, and in general you get the idea she’s trying to minimize her footprint on the world.

Nick was raised in a middle-class, blue-collar family, but attended an Ivy League law school and is now a Republican lawyer hoping to make partner. He’s ambitious but actually not in a cutthroat way. I think it says volumes about his scruples that he refused to make love with Tess in a public parking lot because it’s against the law!

OK, so it also shows him to be a little straight-laced and maybe even stuffy – but he is a lawyer, after all, so not breaking the law seems like a good idea. And it speaks volumes for Tess that, after he refused the car and suggested the bedroom instead, she refused him altogether. She’s not really as open-minded and liberal as she thinks she is.

The verbal sparring in the book was pretty funny – I laughed out loud several times during the short read at the antics. Nick has a dilemma – a famous author the law firm is wooing has specifically asked the lawyers to attend a weekend house party with spouses, and neither Nick nor his buddy Park are married. He goes to Tess – even though now they are no longer dating – and asks her to do this for him as a favor, and to get Park a date too. Tess keeps trying to tell herself their relationship cannot work because they are so diametrically opposed on so many issues, but she likes him as a friend, so she obliges and goes, taking along her best friend Gina. Tess has a hard time realizing what her core values truly are, and what are issues she can bend or compromise on where Nick and others are concerned – the crux of the conflict.

It was a fun story and a great ending. If you are looking for short, hot, funny – this is it.

Melinda

Narration: A

Book Content: A

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: None

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises LTD