Animal Attraction by Jill Shalvis

Narrated by Karen White

A Vintage Mini Review from 2011

Back in the Middle Ages of Romance Audiobooks (like, more than a few years ago), we contributed short reviews to a print book blog post, and we all waited with bated breath and crossed fingers for new Romance titles to be recorded. Now we have our own audiobook-only blog and Romance titles come in by the hundreds every week*. Meanwhile, I went through some of my older files and found a few titles I enjoyed that hadn’t been posted here at AudioGals and are now – in internet-years – vintage. I’m sharing them from time to time, and there will be more from the other reviewers as well.

Animal Attraction is the second book in Shalvis’ Animal Magnetism series. Jade Bennett ran away from her perfect, family-oriented upper-class life in Chicago and ended up in Sunshine, Idaho where she’s worked for 18 months as Dell Connelly’s veterinarian office manager. Now her family is pressuring her to return to the fold and her job running their successful medical clinic.

Dell can’t believe the luck he had hiring an unknown woman with no references and no experience in running a veterinarian office – she was organized, punctual, good with clients and easy on the eyes. She made it clear from the start that she was off-limits to his serial dating ways, so they’d been friends and co-workers only. But now that she was leaving, what harm would it be to give in to the attraction?

I read the first of this series in print and found it to be an ok read but nothing great. I give Karen White full credit for raising this one to the level of a DIK. OK, I’ll let the author have a titch of that credit – the dialog between the truly snarky, sarcastic and witty heroine and the lovable, on-the-make hero was delicious and White delivered it with all the humor and passion it needed. White also gave the narration that perfect tone that lets you forget there’s a narrator while you revel in the story, as though she were sitting there with a cuppa Joe telling it herself. I had one teensy criticism – her Adam, Dell and Brady voices sounded similar enough that if the author didn’t identify the speaker after each line, I wasn’t always sure who said what when any of the three were together. But I only say that to prove that that one minor quibble was my only slight negative. It was a truly delightful read and now I must go back and redo Animal Magnetism in audio this time!

*Hundreds of new Romance audiobooks a week doesn’t always equal quality, in writing, narration or production, unfortunately. But there are a lot more books coming out in audio at the same time as the print version, and even some in audio only! “mixed bag”