Narrated by John Lane and Tatiana Sokolov
Richard VanRyan is described as a tyrant by day and a playboy by night. When he gets passed over for a partnership, he decides to get even with his boss by jumping ship and going to the rival agency. There’s just one problem – the rival agency has a very different working environment, one based on family and teamwork, and they like their employees a little tamer than Richard’s reputation as a “Dick” (har har, get it? Richard? Dick?). Richard needs to change his image, at least long enough to get the job. His head hunter and he come up with the idea of a fake engagement to some woman very different from the one-night-stands he’s been having – and the head hunter suggests the last person Richard would even consider, Richard’s assistant Katharine Elliot, the “bane of his existence”. Miss Elliot is perfect in every way, except that she’s so perfect at her job that he despises her. Of course, he’s hated every other assistant he’s had – and, well, I’m not sure there’s anyone Richard doesn’t hate when The Contract opens.
Katie is subjecting herself to the worst PA job in the universe for one reason only: she needs the money, badly, in order to keep her elderly aunt in a good memory care facility. She scrimps on food, on her wardrobe, on everything, even taking a job for the worst boss in Canada because it pays well. She does everything he asks – picks up his dry cleaning, gets his breakfast and coffee, keeps his appointments and files perfectly. And she receives constant vocal abuse from him, without ever talking back. However, when he requests a meeting with her at his home, she starts to get a little wary – and then she finds out she has to be his fake fiancee! How in the world are they going to convince anyone they have even the slightest feelings for each other, other than animosity?
The fake engagement, however, isn’t going to be enough for the family agency – they want to meet her, and so the ruse begins, and grows. First it’s just for the meet-and-greet party, then for 6 months, then for a year. It’s when Richard gets drunk at the party and announces they’re getting married the next day that things start to really go wrong.
Interestingly, this created a story line that I actually found entertaining as well as moving. The writing is done with a bit of humor and sarcasm injected, and I chuckled several times throughout. But it isn’t really rom-com, and the true hate-to-love journey takes several months, with not one hint of insta-lust anywhere. Katie moves into Richard’s home, and starts “taking care” of him when she realizes he doesn’t really take care of himself. At first, Richard decides what he hates about her is that she is a doormat – but the moment The Contract is executed, her doormat personality disappears, and she starts to stand up to him. She demands, as her part of the contract terms, that he not have any affairs while the engagement/marriage contract is in force, that he wear a wedding ring, and that he open up to her and tell her his entire life story. Because he is desperate to move to the new agency, he agrees to all her terms. It takes them weeks to really start learning about each other, and in order to convince the new employer of his love for Katie, he finds himself starting to actually like her and feel emotions he has kept bottled up. It’s sorta like the song I Whistle a Happy Tune – pretty soon even he is convinced there is a legitimate relationship between them, and also that he enjoys the family-oriented workplace over the cut-throat agency he left.
I don’t know the narrator John Lane who performed all the chapters from Richard’s point of view, even though his CV of 20+ titles at Audible appears to be mostly romance. His narration has me a little stymied. I could hear him breathing, and there was inflection in his delivery, so I assume he’s a real human. But some of his pronunciations and pacing were almost robotic, which was a little jarring. He pronounced the “ed” and “es” at the ends of words with a long E sound (“eed” and “ees”) consistently – I even backed up and relistened to be sure I heard correctly. (He pronounced “roses” as “rosies”, for instance.) That in particular made me wonder if the voice was computer-generated – or maybe if it’s supposed to be Canadian pronunciations? However, honestly, it wasn’t really bad, just, for lack of a better word, weird. And, as I said, a little jarring. Tatiana Sokolov is the alter-ego of narrator Tanya Eby; Eby explains that she created Tatiana in order to read erotica. This book wasn’t anywhere close to erotica, however – it was over three hours in to the listen before the first kiss! Sokolov/Eby is definitely one of my go-to narrators – experienced narration with good pacing, excellent acting skills and delivery, good differentiation between characters. She did a terrific job with Katie’s point of view, and helped bring some much-needed variation to the audiobook.
I enjoyed The Contract and will be looking at this author’s other audiobooks as well – the story was unique (especially in the lack of instant attraction) and moving (yes, I cried, and it was while Lane was narrating too, so I don’t actually think he was a computer) and I recommend it to contemporary romance fans.
Melinda
Narration: John Lane B-; Tatiana Sokolov B+
Book Content: B
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence Rating: None
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Tantor Audio
The Contract was provided to AudioGals by Tantor Audio for a review.
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