Narrated by Tyler Donne with Summer Roberts
Magnificent Bastard starts out with a bang, a marketing blurb for the services of hero Sebastian “Bash” Prince:
When you’re down and out and your heart has been ripped to shreds by an asshole with a dickish-side a mile wide, you don’t need Prince Charming. You need a man who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty, a man who can teach Mr. Wrong a thing or two about what it feels like to be deceived, betrayed, and laid low by the one person in the world you thought you could trust. What you need is a Magnificent Bastard, your very own one-man vengeance machine.
Magnificent Bastard Consulting is part detective agency, part gigolo service, part therapist, as Bash selects one female client at a time and helps her get over her ex by rooting out details about him that will ruin him, by pretending to be her new lover in front of him, and also by helping her build back her self-confidence. The one line he doesn’t cross – he never lets the relationship go any further than a kiss.
Bash helps his clients avoid forming attachments by telling them a little white lie: that he’s involved with Penny, his virtual assistant, in a long-term, committed relationship. Meanwhile, he and Penny have never actually met face-to-face, even though they text, email and even talk by phone more than most married couples do every day. It’s not like she’s far away, either – just across the Brooklyn Bridge. And after all, they are “involved” and it is a “committed relationship” since he’s her boss. He asks Penny over and over to meet him for coffee or join him for a run, but she remains aloof and afar, not even sending him photos.
Penny really does know everything about Bash – she even has his password to the dating app he uses, and follows the convos he has with the women he dates. She knows he never spends more than a few dates with any woman. She even knows the lines he uses for pickup and break up. She has no reason to be anything but the unseen virtual assistant that keeps his business humming, until…
Penny’s mother, a formerly-famous Hollywood actress. becomes engaged to be married.
To Penny’s ex.
But wait – there’s more: her mother has guilt-tripped Penny into being the maid of honor at the wedding by threatening to keep Penny’s two half sisters away from her. So Penny has now decided she needs Bash’s professional services, if he’ll help her and if – gulp – he’ll do it pro bono. Of course, he considers Penny one of his best friends as well as invaluable assistant, so he agrees to accompany her to the Hamptons for the week of wedding festivities and the ceremony, pretending to be her new lover, so she can prove to her mother and her ex that she’s gotten over them both. She doesn’t want to ruin either of them – she just wants the satisfaction of them knowing she isn’t affected by their betrayal, and then she wants to go on with her life, going back to the reclusive virtual assistant position from her apartment in Brooklyn.
Penny has one more request – she believes that Phillip, the ex, knows her too well to believe she and Bash are having sex. He’ll be able to tell, she believes, because she won’t be a good enough actress to pull off the charade… unless they actually do have sex. Just friends with benefits, and just for the week. And that is crossing the line for Bash in oh, so many ways – except once he meets Penny in person, he can’t resist.
Magnificent Bastard Consulting is a genuinely funny concept (and as one reviewer on Audible pointed out, probably not at all a realistic business) and I enjoyed the interplay between the arrogant Magnificent Bastard Bash and his VA Penny. She kept him on his toes – I got the feeling a lot of Penny’s modus operandi was exactly that, because she really knew and understood Bash, and was able to stay a couple steps ahead of him the entire time. It was actually nice to see a heroine sorta get the best of the hero – some of this sub-genre of male-centric contemporary romance has the hero running the show and being the one with all the answers. Penny was very level-headed and goal-focused, and I admired that.
Tyler Donne does a great job narrating the story told in first person POV from Bash’s perspective. He has a great, deep, clear voice and his acting chops are right on. He has an interesting way of placing female voices in a sort of quasi-falsetto that, surprisingly, I find works very well for me. I say “quasi” falsetto only because it doesn’t have a Julia Child/inner diva screech to it at all, it’s very natural and almost sounds like a woman’s voice, without the breathiness/forced air to push the sound out in that range. It goes beyond what other good male narrators do for women’s dialogue, by softening the tone and raising the pitch higher than male but not in the falsetto spectrum; he actually raises the pitch quite a lot, so the difference between the two is marked. He does well differentiating other characters, too, although there are not that many players in the story. Summer Roberts reads the one chapter written from Penny’s POV, and she does a good job although it’s difficult to rate such a short section.
I’m rating it “Glad I had my earbuds in” but I do want to say it’s a little raunchier than some contemporary romance, although not nearly as graphic as this sub-genre (the male-centric contemporary) usually is. If you have tender sensibilities, you might be a little more affected than I was. I recommend it for the fan of urban-based, contemporary romance; it’s very focused on the couple, and it’s pretty light without being over the top, in spite of his company’s mission, and there’s no angst to speak of.
Melinda
Narration: B+
Book Content: B+
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence Rating: None
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Self Taught Ninja
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