Narrated by Coleen Marlo
Knox was a new-to-me author when I picked up her first published novel, Ride with Me, a road-trip book featuring a bicycle ride across America by the protagonists. I really enjoyed it, and proceeded to read her next release, About Last Night
Mary Catherine Talarico is an Italian-American Chicago gal, living in London (or a suburb, rather), working as an intern at a museum. She takes the same train into work every day, where she sees the same folks even though she doesn’t really know them. The one guy who catches her eyes she nicknames City – obviously a London banker, she figures, and wealthy from his dress and mannerisms. Totally not her type even if he is attractive. On the “night” in question, she goes on a blind date, and does the one thing she swore she would never do again: she wakes up in a strange bed and doesn’t remember how she got there. Yeah, slight early spoiler, it’s City’s bedroom, and wait for it – he wasn’t the blind date! And thus begins the relationship.
City’s real name is Neville Chamberlain (named after a distant relative, That Neville Chamberlain), and goes by Nev. Yes, he’s a banker by trade, and yes, his family has money. But in his heart, he’s an artist – if only his controlling mother (Cath considers her Cruella de Vil) would stop guilt-tripping him. That’s his fatal flaw – not apron strings as much as lack of courage, or as Cath would say, he’s a coward. But his fatal flaw pales in comparison to Cath’s many flaws, all catalogued on her body in the form of tattoos, something she has done as a permanent reminder to herself to reform. Knox takes the story beyond the rich guy/poor gal trope and past the Brit vs Yank angle, even though both of these play into the conflicts that keep Cath from letting go of her past. It’s amusing while not being a comedy, and there are enough emotion and real feelings there to keep it from being a one-off beach read. The whole of Cath’s backstory was a little grittier than I was expecting from the tone of the beginning – it starts out light, but the reveal is very dark, even though the overall story is not. I did appreciate that the author gave even Cruella a three-dimensional characterization – she wasn’t cardboard-evil, just domineering.
Coleen Marlo does a really good job with this cross-cultural story – her narrative reading is clear and well-paced; her accents all sound genuine enough (to my Yank ears) to pass; she reads with enough emotion in the tear-filled scenes and with restraint in the steamy love scenes. It’s easier to differentiate when the two protagonists are read with different accents, but she also uses pitch, with all the men easily separated from the women. The dialogue is delivered well, very natural sounding.
As I did some research on this, I discovered that my personal go-to website for books, Fantastic Fiction, keeps Ruthie Knox in the Adults Only section – I found the sex scenes pretty hot, but not hotter than other authors they list in their mainstream website, and it’s definitely not erotica. She writes for a Random House line called Loveswept, which is a rebirth of an earlier line now morphed into “digital only” romance. So far, About Last Night is the only audiobook of Knox’s work, although she released several more books in 2013. With what feels like a rush to record everything, ready for prime time or not, hopefully more of her work will become available with quality narrations.
Melinda
Narration: B
Book Content: B
Steam Factor: For your burning ears only
Violence: None
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Tantor Audio
About Last Night was provided to AudioGals for review by Tantor Audio.
I read this one a while back and really enjoyed it. I didn’t know it was on audio now. Nice.