My Bluegrass Baby by Molly Harper

My Bluegrass Baby

Narrated by Amanda Ronconi

What a romp! Sadie Hutchins is assistant director of the Kentucky Tourism Commission, just assuming the promotion to director when her boss retires. She has worked with this wacky group of folks for several years, and it is a predictable, enjoyable job until a state commissioner hires an outsider for the director’s job instead. Josh Vaughn learns about the position opening from an old fraternity brother, and moves to Kentucky from Atlanta when he’s told he has the director’s job.

The book is a delightful mix of Chick Lit and Romance – told in first person from Sadie’s POV. The story is both about Sadie’s career and about the burgeoning relationship between Josh and Sadie. The outgoing director decides to have the two candidates compete for the job by producing a campaign that the public votes on, with the winner becoming the new director and the loser being the assistant. Sadie’s coworkers are diabolical and relentless in their pranks to help and hinder the two. It’s a nice short read that left me laughing out loud and still feeling the emotion between the two, and indeed between other characters as well. The ending was a teensy bit finagled, but it worked.

Amanda Ronconi does an excellent job with the story – her Kentucky accents are subtle
and wonderful and real, as the accent plays a key part in the story. She differentiates the characters well with pitch, accent and tone. This is my second time to enjoy a Harper/Ronconi collaboration and it works well – her delivery of Harper’s unique style is dry and witty. There were two or three times I experienced a weird tech glitch, when there were two lines being spoken at once – that’s a new problem I haven’t heard before. It was probably 3 or 4 seconds long each time. How can that even happen, I wonder?

This is one of those times where a letter grade is difficult to assign. For narration, no question: an A read. For story, to compare it to other short, contemporary romantic comedies, it gets a solid A; to compare it in general to all my other 5-star/A grade romance favorites, it’s more a 4-star/B – I’ll compromise with a B+, to indicate I really liked it.

Melinda


Narration: A

Book Content: B+

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in, only at the end really

Violence: None

Genre: Chick Lit/Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Audible, Inc.

 

6 thoughts on “My Bluegrass Baby by Molly Harper

  1. I loved this listen too Melinda – Amanda Ronconi is one of the best narrators out there!

    Do you think the descriptions of the food at the state fair were for real? Deep fried Coke – deep fried Oreo’s – a deep fried Krispy Kreme Hamburger? I suppose they are too far out to have been made up but – wow!

    I had the same weird blips with sentences being repeated over the top of another – 3 times fairly early on – very strange and a first for that type of production issue in my experience.

    If there’s an author that could tempt you towards paranormal romance it would be Molly Harper. Her Jane Jameson series is consistently just as LOL funny but for a short dip into that pool try Driving Mr Dead – hilarious!

    1. I love her stories. Have you listened to And One Last Thing? I loved it. I could not stop laughing, and got my friend to listen to it. She loved it! My other friend, Mary got me to listen to the Jane Jameson series and the Naked Werewolf series. I had read them but never listened to them, Amanda Ronconi really brings the characters to life. This is the only book I have not read of her’s so it is now in my wishlist.

      1. Katrina – And One Last Thing is the only Molly Harper book I haven’t listened to yet. I see I need to bump it up my TBL with your added recommendation. :)

        1. I really enjoyed And One Last Thing! It’s technically chick-lit or women’s fiction I guess, but it was moving and often funny and I loved the developing relationship between the leads.

  2. The “Fair Food” is real, believe it or not! Blech! Last year at our state fair there was deep fried butter. yep! Battered and fried butter! Makes me a little nauseated just thinking about it.

    I think the Harper/Ronconi duo is hard to beat. It’s one of the best pairings out there, especially for funny entertaining contempts and light PNR. I haven’t read this one, but I most certainly will.

    Great Review!!

    1. That’s just not right – deep fried butter?

      And here I thought using Krispy Kreme donuts as hamburger buns was one of the strangest food choices I’d ever heard of…

      Now battered and deep fried zucchini – I’m all over that – it’s the only way I’ll eat squash. :)

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