Things I Wanted to Say (but Never Did)

By: Monica Murphy

Narrated by: Allie Piper, Joe Arden

Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

From New York Times bestselling author Monica Murphy comes a brand new dark and twisted bully romance full of secrets and lies …

Whit Lancaster burst into my life like a storm. Dark and thunderous, furious and fierce. Cold, heartless, and devastatingly beautiful, like the statues in our prep school gardens. The school with his family name on the sign. He can do no wrong here. This is his domain.

He’s a menace on campus. Adored and feared. Hated and respected. His taunting words carve into my skin, shredding me to ribbons. Yet his intense gaze scorches my blood, fills me with a longing I don’t understand.

When he comes to my rescue one night, he ends up broken. Bleeding. My instincts scream to leave and let him suffer, but I can’t. I sneak him into my room. Clean him up. Fall for his lies. Let him possess every single part of me until I’m the one left a gasping, broken mess.

Then he leaves me alone in the dead of night, taking my journal with him. Now he knows all my secrets. My hate. My truth. And he promises to use my words against me. I’ll be ruined if my darkest secret gets out. That’s when I strike a bargain with the devil. I’ll let Whit Lancaster ruin me behind closed doors instead.

Things I Wanted to Say (but never did) is a complete standalone. This edgy bully romance contains dark scenes some listeners may find uncomfortable to hear. Listener discretion is advised.

©2021 Monica Murphy (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

This could be great…

I am all for the sex scenes, and I rarely say this, but this had about a few too many…. This story is half way decent if she didn’t fill it with teen sex…. Just saying…. This could have been a 12 hour book versus 16! There were repeat sentences from the narrators also. So someone didn’t do their job with proof editing. Both Narrators were good though.

Annoying female character

I started struggling with finishing this book about half way through. this girl is unbelievably annoying and stupid. I'm going to finish this book, however, since I paid for it. I wish this girl could grow the f*ck up a little.. I mean you would think that she would have a little bit of a back bone but no. she still does everything for Whit even when her inner dialog says she shouldn't. like.. come on. have some self respect. story was ok, but didn't show any real growth with either character. just time jumped and missed all that time that could have made the book better instead of dragging it out so much with their time in high school. Just kept shaking my head and getting aggravated everytime I listened to her part of the story.

I liked the premise of the story

I really liked the premise of this one. It is definitely spicy and yet has an interesting plot. Granted I still feel like at times I would have liked to have seen more emotion and the spice could have toned down because as much as I love spice in books I felt at times it took away from the story. But I liked how it turned out and look forward to more in this series. Also wish there were more male pov parts solely for more Joe Arden ❤️

The idea was there…

The idea/plot behind this book was good. But oh my worddddd were there too many sex scenes. SO many. There was more in this book than the entire 50 shades series.
The female main character was annoyingly ignorant. Also didn’t help that I wasn’t a fan of the female narrators voice. I won’t listen to a book by her again as it was really really hard to listen to her.

Whit is my fav!

I had a love and hate relationship with this story because it is a bully romance and wasn't sure how to feel about it but overall I ended up really loving Summer and Whit! Their story was complicated and the slow burn vibes were awesome!

Good bully/enemies to lovers

I liked this book a lot. The enemies to lovers is there. The smut is there. The narrators are so great, loved them both. I had a great time with this one.

So good!

I have avoided this book for so long, based solely on its length, books that long are daunting to me. But I am so glad that I grabbed the audiobook, because it was amazing. I'm not generally a fan of Joe Arden when the character is this young (he has a great voice for guys in their 30s-40s!) but I actually loved him here, he did something less gruff than normal so I believed him as a teenager. The female narrator was new to me, and she did an amazing job as well.

As far as the storyline goes, it was pretty standard for a HS bully book, but for some reason, I liked it more. And I can't place exactly what it was that made it so good. There were some bits that were predictable, and some things towards the end that didn't sit right with me (like the time jump, which was annoying) but honestly, everything else for the first 70% or so made me so happy that I don't even care. I would love to see more of this world, though I'm not sure there are any side characters worth seeing again besides Whit and Summer, and Monty, so maybe some people we haven't yet been introduced to. Sylvie was at top of my list for her own book until she turned into a wench at the end, and her attitude overrode my need to know what the deal was with her possible Munchausen syndrome or factitious disorder imposed on another by her mother.

*update, these characters appear again in the Arranged Marriage trilogy (start with The Reluctant Bride - they show up in book 2, The Ruthless Groom) which is about Charlotte Lancaster, Whit's cousin.

Narrators great, story ok.

I really enjoyed the narrators but I just didn't care about the two leads. Summer was kinda of annoying and Whit was too mean for my taste for the first 75% of this book.

It also felt so long, and I stopped a few times while in the middle of this and listened to 3 other audio books before coming back and finishing this one.

Overall this was fine, the narrators were what kept me from stopping completely.

I enjoyed the overall plot

I have really come to enjoy a select few male narrators, and Aiden is definitely at the top of that list.
I RARELY write reviews ( especially in comparison to the amount of books I consume weekly), and when I do write a review I even more rarely focus on the narrator.
I ,however , in this particular case had a hard time with the female narrator. Oddly enough, mostly when she was in conversation with other characters in the book, her inner dialogue voice didn’t seem quite as whiny.
She also sounded a bit like she had a dry mouth the whole time.
The story narrative is juvenile and I kept reminding myself of how young they were, I guess because of the level of Sex going on I kept forgetting they were so young.
Usually when kids are under the age of 18 it’s a YA book and it’s nowhere near as spicy ( I have no complaints about the spice) but it threw me off because I’m just not used to the story being told from such young people.
I got up to where I had only 2hrs left of the book and I couldn’t take 1 more min of Summer and her personality any more.
I skipped ahead to the last chapter and listened to how it ended and I felt very satisfied and I didn’t feel like I missed out by skipping those last 2hrs. Maybe it’s how she was narrated, maybe it was just her personality, but by that point in the book I was ready to stab her in the face 🙄
Overall I enjoyed most of the book and the general storyline, so many of the twists I saw coming, but I still enjoyed them and the drama they added to the story.
If you like a lot of sex, and a bully rich kid romance ( if anyone considers this romantic 🤔)
Then definitely listen 🎧

Great story but too long

I did not know how long it was until i started listening. Really good story just too long for my preference