• The Romance Reader's Guide to Life

  • A Novel
  • By: Sharon Pywell
  • Narrated by: Carly Robins
  • Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars (15 ratings)

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The Romance Reader's Guide to Life  By  cover art

The Romance Reader's Guide to Life

By: Sharon Pywell
Narrated by: Carly Robins
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Publisher's summary

"Smart, funny, and compulsively readable." --Kirkus (starred review)

As a young girl, Neave was often stuck in a world that didn’t know what to do with her. As her mother not unkindly told her, she was never going to grow up to be a great beauty. Her glamorous sister, Lilly, moved easily through the world, a parade of handsome men in pursuit. Her brother didn’t want a girl joining his group of friends. And their small town of Lynn, Massachusetts, didn’t have a place for a girl whose feelings often put her at war with the world—often this meant her mother, her brother, and the town librarian who wanted to keep her away from the Dangerous Books she really wanted to read.

But through an unexpected friendship, Neave finds herself with a forbidden copy of The Pirate Lover, a steamy romance, and Neave discovers a world of passion, love, and betrayal. And it is to this world that as a grown up she retreats to again and again when real life becomes too much.

Neave finds herself rereading The Pirate Lover more than she ever would have expected because as she gets older, life does not follow the romances she gobbled up as a child. When Neave and Lilly are about to realize their professional dream, Lilly suddenly disappears. Neave must put her beloved books down and take center stage, something she has been running from her entire life. And she must figure out what happened to Lilly—and if she’s next. Who Neave turns to help her makes Sharon Pywell's The Romance Reader's Guide to Life one of the most original, entertaining, exciting, and chilling audiobooks you will listen to this year.

©2017 Sharon Pywell (P)2017 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Narrator Carly Robins beautifully captures the unique characters in this clever story of twin girls... This is a fun listen." -AudioFile

The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life is a fascinating blend of genres that flows together seamlessly, creating the most original story I’ve read in a long time. Partly narrated from the afterlife, this riveting suspense story manages to be darkly comic at times (Mr. Boppit had me laughing out loud), while dealing with complex family dynamics that can fester for years. The second narrative, an intriguing pirate romance, is deliciously entertaining, but the real love story in this book, is the one between these sisters, and their bond that can’t be broken in any life.” —Chevy Stevens, New York Times bestselling author of Never Let You Go

"Smart, funny, and compulsively readable: this one may finally win the underrecognized author the wider audience her talent deserves." —Kirkus (starred review)

What listeners say about The Romance Reader's Guide to Life

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A Lot of Storylines....

I think the story had a lot going on... maybe too much.

The main character is likeable. The descriptive prose is deft. But the many different storylines were a bit distracting. (There is the main story about sisters after WW2 developing an independent business...and also a tale which the main character reads to herself about a Pirate..... and also a fantasy-driven storyline about a dead dog and dead relative...)

I think telling just one story-- the one about the sisters and their lives would have worked better... but I stuck with it.

The narrator was very good.

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