I Wish You Were Mine by Lauren Layne

I Wish You Were MineNarrated by Lucy Malone

Formerly a star quarterback with six Super Bowl rings in his career, Jackson Burke is now a journalist for Oxford in I Wish You Were Mine, book 2 in the Oxford series. After being the victim of a car accident that ruined his shoulder and his career followed by a scandalous divorce, he’s a bitter shell of the man he was. He doesn’t fit in with his Oxford colleagues. His only buddy is his ex-wife’s sister Mollie.

Mollie has had a crush on Jackson since they met a decade or so ago, when he married her sister Madison. Now she’s looking for a new apartment and takes Jackson up on his offer to share his Park Avenue penthouse while looking. It’s no big deal, right? They’ve been buddies for years, after all. And she doesn’t still have that crush on him – does she? What could possibly go wrong?

After enjoying book 1 in this series, Irresistibly Yours, as well as the few e-books I’ve read by this author, I was disappointed in this story. I think there’s a big difference between characters and a plot that evoke emotion – even anger, disgust, irritation – and characters and a plot that evoke apathy and eye-rolling. This story mostly had me cringing at how much of a doormat Mollie (or as Jackson and Madison kept calling her, “Molls”) was. Even that nickname annoyed me. Her sister Madison was baaaad and mean – mean-girl mean, in a cartoon way. All the characters seemed 2-dimensional, the plot too carefully crafted out of tissue-paper thin cliches. In book 1, the women of Stiletto magazine that shared office space sort of adopted the heroine, Oxford sports editor Penelope Pope, and rallied around her in her time of need. Somehow that worked for me, maybe because it seemed more reasonable that they would get to know Penelope. In this book, really, they just annoyed me. They didn’t know Mollie at all, but immediately wanted to know how Jackson was in bed when they first met her, even knowing she was his ex-wife’s sister and the big scandal over his divorce. That didn’t seem realistic. And generally, when written well, I like a good nerdy beta heroine but Mollie just made me want to pull out my earbuds and take up a hobby that involves sharp knives.

After putting those two people together, the story felt like the author phoned it in – let’s see, how can we put them in a situation where sex is the logical next step? What if we bring in the bitchy sister and let her whine about [anything and everything] so we all hate her, except for Molls who just keeps lying down and taking it from her? Let’s give Mollie a sidekick who is sensible and therefore gets very little page-time, because she makes Mollie seem even worse – wait, let’s have the sidekick give Mollie a makeover before we dismiss her! Nerd turned knockout!

Lucy Malone’s narration was serviceable but not a match for the mediocrity that was this story. Her delivery is good in general, pacing, breathing, all appropriate for American Contemporary Romance. She uses a sort of gruff, almost stage whisper like quality to invoke men’s voices. Jackson is from Texas, and from time to time the author mentions his Texas accent, so occasionally she slipped a little bit of that in his voice – things like dropping the “g” on “-ing” words. I thought I heard her use “git” for “get” once or twice (something my Texan grandmother did her best to delete from my own speech as a child). There wasn’t much of an effort to give them any more of a regional sound, even though I believe Mollie and Madison were also Texans. She differentiated well between characters, so it was clear when Mean Bitch Sister or Doormat Sister was speaking. All in all, I wasn’t particularly impressed. Blame it on the material.

It’s not that the grammar or sentence structure was bad – I just didn’t like the plot OR the characters. You know, I didn’t actually hate this book – mostly I kept thinking about our earlier discussion of DNF books and considered adding this one to the stack, not because it was dreadful but because I just wanted it to end. When you start to think maybe the hero would be better off with Bitchy Sister, who at least had a backbone, maybe the story isn’t working for you. So – take this Grumpy Listener’s words with a tablespoon of salt because YMMV – other reviewers found it “well written” and “emotionally charged”.

Melinda


Narration: B-

Book Content: C-

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence Rating: None

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Tantor Audio

 

 

 

I Wish You Were Mine was provided to AudioGals by Tantor Audio for a review.

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1 thought on “I Wish You Were Mine by Lauren Layne

  1. “I like a good nerdy beta heroine but Mollie just made me want to pull out my earbuds and take up a hobby that involves sharp knives.”

    LOLOLOLOL!!

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