Audiobook, Audible (Box Set, books 1 and 2 – epilogues)
Author: TL Swan
Narrators: Elena Wolfeand Stephen Dexter
Meet-cute: Vegas. Bar. Ashley is being harassed by a man incessantly and when she sees a guy nearby she pretends he’s her husband. He plays along and soon enough he’s betting she’ll be enjoying “married sex” before the night is over. It doesn’t hurt that he’s gorgeous, has an Australian accent, and she’s really attracted to him. They have a night of mind-blowing sex and when morning comes, he asks for her phone number and says he’ll meet her back in NYC for a wonderful weekend together. In true romance novel fashion, he loses his phone and can’t call her. He goes to NYC anyway and even posts an ad in the classifieds to see if he can find her. The trouble is they never exchanged names. They never got to meet that weekend, but he’s left smitten by his “Vegas wife”.
Fast-forward to six years later and Ashley moves to LA for internship. She managed to finish medical school and got a placement under a prestigious cardiologist. She hasn’t had it easy in the last 6 years: she had a kid, got engaged, finished school. The last thing she needed was to get to the hospital and find out that Dr.Stanton is her “Vegas husband”.
There are so many things that muck up their way to an HEA: Cameron is an arrogant AF, Ashley is the queen of bad decisions… you name it.
Part 2 is a whole book of epilogues. It starts with Cameron trying to propose to Ashley and his plans seem to never come to fruition. Anything else I say here will be a major spoiler for book 1 (the proposal already kinda is), after all it’s one huge epilogue.
I’m not sure about this book. I love TL Swan (Tristan Miles is the love of my bookish life) but this didn’t sit well with me. It’s obviously well-written, but I am going to show my age here: I wanted to slap both Cameron and Ashley silly. I thought Cameron was (most of the time) an entitled, arrogant, alpha-hole and I’m too old to find that kind of man “endearing”. As for Ashley, for a mother and a freaking doctor, she is the queen of poor judgement. Seriously, these two are doctors, old enough not to act like petulant children. I won’t even go into the miscommunication (this trope is not a problem for me) and the mistrust…
Also, Cameron does something (egged on by his brother Joshua, who is supposed to be another swoony hero) that I find unforgivable. He backpedals in the middle of it, but he DID take those actions. Not cool.
And, not “kink” shaming here, but if you have a pretty sexually adventurous wife who is scared shitless of doing something in bed, cool your jets, man. Don’t go caveman and “exert your rights”. She does end up getting on board with it, but the way he talks to her (I WANT this and I WILL get it) bugged the crap out of me. Nope.
Towards the end of the epilogue book, I warmed more towards Cameron (especially the last chapter). The 10-year flash forward finally showed me a Cameron I liked.
All in all, this was just ok for me. I didn’t really need to be two books and a “book of epilogues” felt silly to me. I had high hopes for a TL Swan hero. After all, she wrote Tristan.
Narration: this is an 18-hour-long whopper and thank God it was Elena Wolfe (yeah, you know who she is) and Stephen Dexter…
