Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Audiobook: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 💫 Spice: 🌶️🌶️

Thanks to Berkley Romance and PRH audio for the gifted audiobook, for which I’ve provided my honest review below.

If you’ve ever seen your heartbreak in a Taylor Swift song, this book is for you! It is a quick-read second-chance romance with a ton of heart.

Max has never stopped thinking about his college girlfriend – his true love and heartbreak. It just so happens that his first love was Riley Wynn. THE RILEY WYNN. Ten years ago, when he chose not to travel with Riley to Nashville to pursue their shared musical dreams but stay home to help run his parents’ retirement home, they set out on two separate paths. Hers to become a chart-topping pop star and his to become the co-owner of the struggling family retirement home. Now, Riley has released an album of breakup songs about her exes. Max refuses to listen to it, knowing he’d be heartbroken if she wrote one about him and heartbroken if she didn’t. He is shocked when Riley appears at the retirement home after ten years of radio silence, with a request that ultimately leads him to join her on tour and accompany her on piano when she performs the song about him. But will months on the road rekindle more than just their love of performing together?

Sometimes, I give a book an excellent review because the story is deep and meaningful, making me look at my life or see the world through a new lens. Then there are times when it gets an excellent review because it is just a whole lot of fun. The characters are great; you get how Riley feels that every relationship is doomed to failure but can become a good song, you understand their mutual reluctance to start something that might end in heartbreak, and it has so many great components! Dual POV, second chance, forced proximity, different worlds, and (if you’ve read Bromance Book Club) grad gestures. It is a good time.

The audiobook is narrated by Dan Bittner (Every Summer After) and Brittany Pressley (American Royals) who have both done lots of other fantastic audiobooks. They put their talents to great use here.