Narrated by Callie Dalton and Andrew Eiden
Olivia Marshall is her family’s black sheep – she has the worst luck ever, and since she just burned down her apartment building while incinerating the letters of her cheating ex, she’s bunking with her brother and his best friend, the obnoxious Colin Beck.
Colin hasn’t paid much attention to his best friend Jack’s irritating little sister over the years, but now that she’s inadvertently also his roommate, he can’t seem to get her off his mind. A text to a friend goes to a wrong number instead, his new sexting buddy Miss Misdial. And lo and behold, Olivia gets a wrong-number sext that she just can’t resist responding to – Mr. Wrong Number. Coincidence or best meet-cute ever?
Mr. Wrong Number is my first book by author Lynn Painter. She seems to be channeling the wacky humor of my favorite rom-com authors like Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Kristan Higgins with her crazy meet-cute setup and laugh-out-loud banter. Any book that starts with “IT STARTED THE NIGHT AFTER I BURNED DOWN MY BUILDING” is guaranteed to be a keeper for me. When it’s quickly followed by a text from a “pervy wrong number” asking what she’s wearing, and her response is “Your mom’s wedding dress and her favorite thong” – well, you know you are in for a romantic comedy treat. At least, if you have my sense of humor – YMMV! And like SEP and Higgins, Painter manages to find both the funny moments and the real human emotions between two likable characters, so that I found myself rooting for them to resolve any impediments to their HEA.
Olivia comes from an actually supportive but uber-critical family who generally want the best for her – if only she would follow their advice. (My mind immediately went to Annabelle in SEP’s Match Me If You Can.) She’s managed to get herself into a number of scrapes, sometimes her bad luck and sometimes just her recklessness. And now she’s essentially homeless and jobless – which leads her to a job writing a parenting column even though, yeah, she doesn’t have any kids, a fact she decided not to share with her new boss – another Livvie-fueled disaster waiting to happen. Then things start to heat up between Colin and Livvie – but the final disaster of identity-reveal might be the one disaster she can’t get over.
Callie Dalton and Andrew Eiden are really, seriously, 2 of my all-time favorite romance/romantic comedy narrators. I first heard Dalton as the narrator of Mariana Zapata’s works, where she often portrayed fiercely competitive athletic heroines. Her reading of Livvie was just as fierce, since Livvie didn’t let things like burning buildings and misdialing perverts slow her down. Dalton also has very credible male voices in her acting repertoire, as the book is done dual-style, not duet. Eiden’s voice is just so appealing, and his acting rivals Dalton – their voices embody the chemistry between the two main characters. He manages the same credibility in his female voices as Dalton’s male ones, and he differentiates all the characters well, using pitch and timbre and accents to make everyone in their story hold their own. He’s a narrator I could totally listen to reading pretty much anything.
I needed to get past the idea that mis-dialing a text message coincidentally to your best friend’s sister is even possible using today’s smart phone technology – I mean, who even knows anyone’s number? I just click a name in my contacts. And how many of your acquaintances have a phone number 1 digit or so off from each other? Once I bought that underlying premise, the rest was funny and sweet and snarky and, well, your typical rom-com. I haven’t gone into the author’s motives or character- and world-building here – just go download it and listen to it and laugh and feel and smile. You’re welcome.
Melinda
Buy Mr. Wrong Number by Lynn Painter on Amazon
