Marie

Spoiler alert: The book was funny, flowed well and the story was original. (Wasn't very hard to figure out who the bad guy was though.) There was a severe lack of character development (all characters) I felt would have made this book great. The Narrator wasn’t horrible but he wasn’t that great either. In some parts of the story his inflections were off. Not making a question sound like a sentence, not delivering sarcasm in the intended form, showing surprise when there wasn’t a call for it. I lovedry humor but it has to be read well and sadly this wasn’t. It was difficult to follow the dialog because of his reading. Here is the spoiler alert: The major problem I had was the ending. I only like happy endings in the books I read. This was not. The ending wasn’t written in a way that left me on pins and needles to see a sequel. This book had all the elements of a great romance book but the ending was so real life I felt in the end I had just read something from the Oprah book club. Not my preference. I do not know yet if I even want to find out if they get their stuff together in the future.

This is the first book I have listened with Shannon Gunn as a narrator. I will listen to any book he narrates because he is that awesome. He gives the needed pauses, inflection and makes the humor in this book sing. I could go on forever about how great of a job he did with this story and the characters. The story and writing were wonderful because of the narration. I laughed a lot with this book. Laugh out loud funny.

I truly enjoyed the different take on the hero. He is far from perfect which makes him perfect. He comes off as rude and insane but probably has high functioning autism. The characters were very well developed throughout the book. As the book went on there was always more to be added to already likable characters. I did want to kill the duke a few times but at the end of the book I could see being interested in his own book.
The bad guy is pretty easy to figure out with the clues given, but that still didn't detract from wanting to finish it. Narration was spot on. Even though there is a female narrator she didn't make the men sound like McGruff the Crime dog or coping with a bad case of COPD combined with a fatal case of TB. She could keep the attention of a dozen two year old's on sugar highs.

This book had a good story line but...the chapters went by so fast that I didn't get emotionally attached to any of them. If the dialog hadn't been so bland, maybe a few funny moments or comments then it would have flowed better. However, the dialog was bland and there wasn't a humorous moment to be found. More than halfway through the book and still no character development. There is a guy with a kid and a guy who was his wife's best friend. Never is there a connection, shared moment with wife and guy with kid and guy best friend. How does that even happen in life?Even if this was a very well written book where I could give a fat two cents about the characters in it, the narrator ruined it. He is sooo frigging chipper during the whole book (even during the death of the wife or speaking about guilt ridden feelings dude is having for his dead wife's best friend) that it became...confusing, irritating, frustrating..I could keep going. During the sex scenes the two men sounded more as if they were discussing the shopping list or checking to make the spark plugs were in correctly. (Okay, man turn her over now. Okay you're good to go. Thanks dude, see you at the bowling alley, say hi to the wife and kids.)

Original story line. Only problem I really had was with the narration. No inflection. They did fall in love a bit to quick for me But overall it was okay.

I wasn't able to get past the first few chapters. The narration was very monotone, no inflection and no distinction between different characters. I couldn’t figure out who was talking unless the author stated (usually after) who was speaking. Made it frustrating to get into the story. The story line did not seem bad. The two main characters (at least as much as I read) did not jump all over each other or instantly fall in love. Initial attraction was there but not harped on and the author didn’t go into much detail about it, which was nice. Will read this on my kindle instead. Again, I only got through the first few chapters.