Narrated by Karen Chilton
Once Ghosted, Twice Shy is an f/f novella in Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals series and it’s also my first f/f romance. To paraphrase Katy Perry, I listened to a book about a girl kissing a girl and I liked it. (It’s okay, you can groan now.)
I have A Princess in Theory on my TBR but I still haven’t managed to actually read it. Bad Kaetrin! Once Ghosted, Twice Shy stands alone very well however so that was no barrier for me. The story takes place, for the most part, over four days – three in the previous spring when Likotsi and Fabiola first meet via a dating app and one in the current winter when they reconnect. Their history is cleverly told in flashbacks interspersed with their activities in and around Manhattan in the present day and is redolent with art and colour, while keeping the plot tight. Given the audiobook is just over three hours long, this worked extremely well.
Likotsi is the personal assistant/advisor to Prince Thabiso of Thesolo and at the time she met Fabiola, who is Haitian by heritage and lives in New York, she expects to return to Thesolo within a few days. Anything she and Fab start is destined to end quickly because neither of them are interested in a long-distance relationship. At least, that’s the plan.
However, one date leads to two and then three and Likotsi falls hard for Fab. She is devastated then, when abruptly Fab shuts things down.
The story begins in the present day when Likotsi, still heartsick after eight months, decides to take a vacation and spend some time in Manhattan in a “project” to finally get over Fabiola. The plan goes awry almost immediately when the pair meet on the train into the city. Against her better judgement, Likotsi agrees to spend some time with Fab. More than anything, she’s hoping she’ll get an explanation for why Fab ghosted on her the year before. Maybe then she will finally be able to move on.
Instead, throughout the course of the day all of those feelings rear up again and become even stronger.
Slowly, the novella rolls out Fabiola’s side of things and, of course, there is a good explanation for her behaviour back then.
Likotsi has been in New York since the previous spring and intends to be there for some months more but it is also the case that she will be going back to Thesolo in the future so at least some of the things which were stumbling blocks for them at the start are still there once the “truth” is revealed. (That truth by the way, is not horrible, both Fab and Likotsi are very sympathetic and likeable characters) Thus, they still have some work to do and some decisions to make before they can have their HEA.
The narration is good; Karen Chilton has a rich smooth timbre to her voice which is very pleasing to the ears. Likotsi has an accent similar to a person from Zimbabwe or Nigeria and this differentiates her voice well from Fabiola’s.
There were, however, numerous times in the listen where odd pauses were injected into sentences, perhaps where Ms. Chilton took a breath (? or maybe for other reasons) but they were not places where it made sense in the narrative to pause. Sometimes it had the effect of changing the meaning of the words quite a bit and there were a few occasions where I was honestly puzzled for a few seconds until I mentally replayed the sentence with the vocal ‘comma’ in the right place. There were other times when the pause gave the effect of a sentence ending and a new one beginning – which left a few phrases oddly out on their own. This was particularly a pity because some of the language was just beautiful with brilliant word pictures created by the author and the disjointedness present in the narration at times detracted from them a little. I hasten to add that these issues weren’t ubiquitous or constant. But they were regularly present throughout the book.
That said, I still enjoyed the narration and the story itself was enough to get me any over any occasional confusion.
Once Ghosted, Twice Shy is also a bit of an homage to New York and the relative brevity of the story means that it would make a fabulous movie – so Netflix ought to get right on that. I’d watch the hell out of it.
Kaetrin
Buy Once Ghosted, Twice Shy by Alyssa Cole on Amazon
