After the Fairy Tale

Rather than a traditional audiobook, this was recorded and presented more like a radio play with a full voice cast and background sound effects, which seems to be something Audible are doing to an increasing degree. 

The premise is that Amanda has recently won a Bachelor-like reality TV show and is laying low in her small hometown while waiting for the series to start and finish airing. She's signed an NDA so not a single friend or family member is aware that she won the show and is now engaged to the bachelor, a Scottish man called Liam. As just about anyone who has ever read a romance novel can probably guess, she reconnects with someone from her past and there is angst and drama and all the rest. Nothing ground-breaking, sure, but definitely lots of potential for an enjoyable narrative there. 

I found the characters of Amanda and Josh likeable but never felt any sympathy or affection towards Liam, which kind of took away from the tension of the supposed love-triangle for me. I couldn't really root for the Amanda/Liam relationship, what we saw of it never felt genuine and the endgame was really clear from the start – as in, Amanda and Josh had loads of chemistry and Amanda and Liam just... didn't. So, a lot of Amanda's angst over her feelings didn't really ring true. 

I also, despite LOVING Scottish accents, found Liam's dialogue very overdone in term of Scottish idioms, and although the accent didn't sound false or forced, the use of the idioms and slang did, which caused some dissonance and may have contributed to my dislike of the character.