Undone by Christina Lee

Narrated by Tim Paige

The books I’ve listened to by this author in the past have been emotional, character-driven romances featuring complex characters with real heart and depth to them. I freely admit that I picked up Undone for review expecting more of the same – but I got something completely different and far less satisfying.

Shay Shanahan somehow blags his way into a job as assistant to the famous ‘stylist to the stars’ Rowan Abernathy. Shay doesn’t know how to sew on a button, let alone how to tell his Gucci from his Prada, but Abernathy is desperate to fill the position and Shay is desperate to be able to eat and pay his rent, so he takes the job when it’s offered. Over the following months, Shay makes himself pretty much indispensable to Rowan, who is a one-note grump, and fits right in with the rest of the team, who all appreciate his outgoing personality and sense of humour – and the way he can keep Rowan on track.

I was going to write a more extensive description of the plot, but it’s basically your bog-standard boss/assistant romance. Rowan is a growly and demanding genius at what he does but he’s rubbish at keeping himself organised and his personal life is a mess; Shay is upbeat and brilliant at keeping his boss in line, doesn’t take any crap and happily snarks his way through the day. I’m sure you’ve read or listened to this story loads times – and sadly, Undone has nothing new to offer that makes it stand out or work better than the countless other similar romances out there. In fact, the overall impression I was left with is – “it’s Rule Breaker minus the humour, chemistry, emotional heft and depth of characterisation.” The characters are nice enough, but they’re stereotypes – and the most interesting thing about Rowan is that he’s a side (doesn’t enjoy penetrative sex, either giving or receiving) and has been made to feel inadequate because of it by previous partners.

Worst of all is that there’s no chemistry or connection between Shay and Rowan. We don’t get Rowan’s perspective because the story is told entirely from Shay’s PoV, but that shouldn’t be a bar to being able to convey a sense of the attraction being felt by the non-PoV character (see Rule Breaker, again) – and even though we are in Shay’s head, there’s no real sense of attraction to Rowan coming from him either. When they hook up for the first time, it comes completely out of the blue; so much so that I had to check to make sure I hadn’t skipped a few chapters.

Tim Paige’s smooth baritone is easy on the ear, and his narration is well-paced with clear differentiation between all the characters and good female voices. His characterisations of the two leads fit them well – Rowan’s dialogue is pitched deep with a bit of gravel thrown in, and Shay sounds appropriately younger (the age gap is about ten years, I think) and livelier, although there isn’t always a huge amount of difference between his ‘Shay voice’ and his ‘narrating voice’, which meant that there were times I couldn’t tell if Shay was speaking out loud, thinking, or narrating. The dialogue is generally infused with a good degree of expression, but sometimes I wanted a bit more in the narrative.

Undone is unoriginal and even dull in places. The characters are barely two-dimensional, there’s no chemistry between them and it seems like the author forgot to actually write the romance into the story. Tim Paige is a talented performer but sadly, this wasn’t the best use of his skills.

Caz