Thank You For Listening
If you’re a fan of contemporary romances in audio, chances are you’re already familiar with Julia Whelan’s work behind the microphone. After turning her hand to writing romance in 2019 with My Oxford Year, she’s back with Thank You For Listening, an emotionally gripping, touching and yet fun story about two audiobook narrators who unexpectedly fall in after a chance encounter.
The amazingly-named Sewanee – Swan – Chester is proud of her job as an audiobook narrator, especially as it allows her to stretch her acting muscles while looking after her dementia-stricken grandmother. She’s largely given up on acting in the physical realm after an on-set injury killed her rising acting career, but being a famous personality in the audiobook world means personal appearances, which also means going to conventions to promote her talent. When a handsome man sweeps her off of her feet for a one-night stand in Las Vegas, she thinks that that’s all there’ll be to it.
Sewanee is surprised to be offered the chance to narrate a romance novel by a recently-deceased bestselling author. She normally rejects romance novel jobs because her first love ended tragically, but then she learns the man who’ll be voicing her character’s love interest is none other than Brock McNight. Brock is a popular voice with a mysterious past and a face the public has never seen. Sewanee naturally wants to find out more about him, so she decides to join the project. But when she learns Brock’s real identity, she’s thrown for a loop.
If you know anything about romance novels, you already know how Sewanee’s one-night stand and Brock’s mysterious self come together, but Thank You For Listening builds up a steamy, banter-filled and spicy-fun romance between them so quickly that it doesn’t matter if you get there before the story does. At least for the first half of the book. I liked Sewanee, but it was hard for me to like ‘Brock’ after a while; I mean, the man’s a non-reader who narrates books for a living! When they stooped to jumping to the worst conclusions about one another because it’s romance and ‘tis the plot, I had to groan. I wanted more of everything I liked about their relationship to stretch deeper into the book.
Also problematic is the sheer amount of plot in the book. There’s a lot going on – Sewanee’s career, her grandmother’s illness, her unresolved trauma. Add on career issues, stuff going on with her parents and a whole lot of other baggage, and it’s really too much. It could have done with being around a hundred pages shorter, which would have prevented the odd end-of-book crash. But even with that factored in, Thank You For Listening is a pretty satisfying ride overall.
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Recent Comments
Just listened to this in audiobook format and really enjoyed it. I wonder if you would have liked the book better in audio format? There are a handful of titles out there that work that way for me. (Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer is so much better in audio format than off the page, for example.) I’m temped to try reading this off the page to see if that is true here as well. Given that I listened to it first, it may not work off the page for me.
I also have to take issue with your comment that there is too much else going on in the story. It is a fair criticism for readers of your review who are looking for traditional CR. Thank You For Listening is clearly not a “traditional” romance. Based on the comments of the characters in the book itself, the author wasn’t interested in writing “a romance” or being pigeon-holed into the romance genre either. (sigh)
But I’ll also point out the “boredom” with much of what is being written/published/promoted in a recent blog post here at AAR has to do with the fact that there isn’t enough other stuff going on in the lives of the MCs in most of today’s romances. Give me emotional complexity and secondary characters and something other than the MCs infatuation with each other to deal with any day of the week. Personally, I really want those extra hundred pages. ;-)
It’s possible it would have worked better as an audio book for me! Like a B+ is no failure by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just not a DIK for me.
I generally don’t like my general fiction overcluttered with plot either, TBH. But this is all just me.
I think the grade you gave the book is just fine! Didn’t mean to imply otherwise. There are things I didn’t care for in the book – which I mentioned over at Kaetrin’s review because she DID grade the book higher. (I have serious issues with Whelan’s characterization of romances as porn at several points throughout the book to be problematic.)
I was just struck by your comment about too much going on in this book, when the conversations taking place over at the “what’s coming in 2025” blog are all about CR being boring and HR being MIA. The cognitive dissonance in my head made your remark really stand out, I think. :-)
No no, it’s OK! Differing opinions are important, healthy and good!