Narrator Stephanie Németh-Parker whisks listeners away to the heart of Italy in this second-chance contemporary romance. Max is an ordinary woman working various jobs to get out the huge debt she's dug herself into. When the CIA offers her an exorbitant amount of money to pose as a body double for Europe's youngest female prime minister, Max can't say no. However, when she arrives in Europe, she finds out her handler is Flynn, the man who broke her heart years earlier. Németh-Parker's vibrant, upbeat tone conveys Max's conflicted yet strong-willed persona. Varying her pitch and tone, Németh-Parker also creates distinct character voices and showcases an array of accents.
Pub Date: March 18, 2025
Duration: 10 hrs
DD ISBN: 9780593913970
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
After her divorce, Roberta Jewett, with her three daughters, returns to Camden, Maine, to start a new life. Such an independent move in 1916 brings difficulties with her mother, her in-laws and the townspeople. Dukes's performance, while skillful, sometimes suffer in scenes of emotional content. His pace slows, and his reading acquires the peculiar emphasis of someone trying to get instructions across to a non-English-speaking person. The effect is disturbingly laughable. When he resumes his normal pace, the story revives and personalities emerge again, but the awkwardness remains as an odd interruption to Spencer's drama of pain and love, dispelling Dukes's carefully constructed characterizations.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 3 hrs
Publisher: Dove
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
A young Southern woman marries into an aristocratic Boston family and spends her summers at a vacation community on the Maine coast. Heavy-handed abridgment reduces this novel to an outline which denies the listener any character development. Judith Ivey offers stereotypical dialects which are discordant to a New Englander's ear. In her interpretation the Down East Mainers speak like thugs in raspy voices. Her presentation of a Boston accent is phonetically erratic and also spoken in gruff tones. The color and flavor of Maine are missing from this tasteless rendition.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 3 hrs
Publisher: Harper Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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