Say You Will

Trust & Tequila, Book 3

De: Evangeline Williams

Narrado por: Aiden Snow, CJ Bloom

Henry

Four years, nine months, and twelve days ago, Franki Lennox left New York to study abroad. In all that time, I've never even thought of touching another woman.

Now, she's back. But a ticking clock on a family ultimatum means there's no time to convince my sister's friend that she and I are meant to be. I'll earn her love after I put a ring on Franki's finger. It's true that I know more about body armor than I do romance. But, surely, I can figure out how to woo my wife.

Franki

The sweet astrophysicist I crushed on is gone. Five years later, he's a man with scars on his knuckles and ice in his veins. Henry McRae can shove his offensive "marriage of convenience" up his asinine ego.

Then I learn what my father has planned for me. It turns out, the man Henry has become... may be exactly the one I need.

Say You Will features a heroine with chronic illness and a neurodivergent hero. Contains mature content. A complete list of content warnings can be found on the author's website.

©2024 Evangeline Williams (P)2024 Podium Audio

LOVE this story and these characters!

I absolutely adore this story and especially these characters. I’m a Level 1 autistic and also physically disabled. I’m married to a neurodivergent man, and we have autistic kids.

Maybe that’s why I relate so well to this book. They felt like they were lifted straight from my family. This is EXACTLY our sense of humor and how we relate to the world.

Some of these conversations are ones we’ve actually had in real life. It’s quirky, with a neurodivergent mmc and an fmc with a disability and that disability is still there at the end. Neither of them magically “heals” from those things. It’s just part of who they are. No whining about it. Just life.

Henry has been given an ultimatum from his grandmother. “Get married or lose this family company forever to your crappy cousin who will sell it off for parts.”

The problem is, Henry has been secretly in love with his childhood friend, Franki his whole life. He can’t bring himself to marry someone else. He also needs that company.

Franki left for college years ago, and he’s been waiting for her to return to “make his move” but she didn’t come back. Instead, she started graduate school. Henry is getting desperate, so when he sees she’s come back to be a bridesmaid in a wedding, he proposes immediately. No lead up. No confession of feelings. Just a business proposal to get it out of the way, partially because he knows she has so many options, and he knows he’s terrible with social interactions. He thinks the only reason any woman would want him is for his money, not in a self-pitying way, but just thinking he’s trying to logically solve a problem to make her happy and be willing to accept him.

His timing is AWFUL, especially since Franki has been burned by parents who use her for their own ends constantly. So it feels like her best friend’s older brother just wants to use her to get this company. Worse, she had a crush on him, so it stings even more.

Franki can see that Henry is giving everything that once made him happy up to meet his family’s expectations. And she refuses to be part of it or allow herself to be used. On the other hand, her dad is trying to get her to go out with a business associate to close a deal for him.

So, while she won’t marry him, the two of them can help each other out by letting the other’s pushy relatives think they’re going to get married while they work out another plan.

Henry has one month to “woo” her into marrying him. Yes, that’s the word he uses because they’re both kind of “odd”, and it just makes me love him more. Franki has a month to convince him he doesn’t have to marry anyone at all and that his family can survive without him selling his soul to keep them happy.

There are so many cute moments in this book, like when he buys a company in France just so he can hire her to translate for him, and how before she left for school he trained her sausage dog to keep men away from her, but he forgot that Oliver would see him as a man to keep away too when she comes back. So they have this adorable, hilarious rivalry that grows into love between him and the dog.

I’ve read this book multiple times since it released and own it in ebook, paperback, and now audiobook. Yes, I pretty much made it my whole personality for a while and tell everyone I know who reads to read this book, and I’d judge anyone harshly if they didn’t love it the way I do, lol. Because what is wrong with you if you don’t? Lol.

If I had one complaint, it’s that, as much as I love Aiden Snow’s narration usually, I kind of felt like he didn’t “get” these characters all the time. He read Henry’s voice as mean occasionally or the child version of Henry as whiny sometimes when, reading it myself, I knew he was just autistic.

And I felt like he couldn’t tell when Henry was joking all the time or if he did, he clearly didn’t get the humor himself. So the comedic timing was a little off in some places. CJ Bloom totally got it, and her parts were perfect, but Aiden just didn’t quite sound like Henry to me. On the other hand, that may be because this book became an immediate comfort read for me, and I read it three times in ebook in the six months or so before it released on audiobook. So, I had a definite idea in my head already of how the characters sounded, and Aiden’s performance didn’t match my expectation. That may be a “me” problem more than an audiobook problem. I really can’t tell.

I get why narrators do a whole series at a time, but when the mc’s are so different in each book, I think it wouldn’t hurt to hire the right narrator for a specific character rather than expect one actor to fit every role. He couldn’t have been more perfect for the stoic ex-military bodyguard in the book before this one in the series. But I think this one needed someone who understood the character a little better.

Another great one!

Franki and Henry are possibly my favorite characters in this series so far. I was laughing out loud so many times. The female narrator did a great job with her interpretation and performance of Franki. She was so sweet, but you could see her growing stronger as the story went on. She loved Henry so much and was so kind and gentle, but also never let him get away with his antics. And the whole thing with the dog and Henry was hilarious!