ECONOGAL

Both a romance and a love story, Thank You for Listening is an enchanting story with depth. Julia Whelan’s experience as a screenwriter and audiobook narrator provides the necessary background to pen this delightful book. My only question as someone who has never heard an audiobook, do the books end with the phrase thank you for listening?

Readers of romance novels know a common plot is a couple meet for a night of passion, part in the morning and somehow find each other in the future. And after a fiery courtship there is the HEA- Happily Ever After. Whelan incorporates this plot into her love story.

Thank You for Listening is truly a commentary on the entertainment industry. The successes and failures as well as the intensity and hard work needed to stay at the top. Then the novel takes things one step further by creating a protagonist disfigured by a freak accident early in her career.

Lead character Sewanee Chester is an audiobook narrator with a tragic past. However, she seemingly has moved on. (Of course, she hasn’t…) She is unwillingly heading to Vegas to moderate a panel of Romance narrators. The character of Sewanee is complex. She is marred both literally and figuratively. Yet, she is so very giving. She definitely deserves love and not just a love interest. The question is will it be with mysterious one night Nick or the never met in person, fellow narrator Brock McKnight?

Whelan successfully incorporates the many types of love into Thank You for Listening. Naturally there is the romantic love, but there is also the love of best friends and the love of family. A subplot is the growing dementia of Sewanee’s grandmother. The once vibrant actress is progressing toward a loss that neither she nor her son and granddaughter know quite how to handle. Since, Sewanee’s parents are divorced there is yet another layer of complexity.

I loved this book on many levels. The background industry of audiobooks is one I am not familiar with, and the author’s knowledge proved educational. The romance was perfectly portrayed. Yet, Thank You for Listening is much deeper than a typical romance. Truly it is a novel of love and growth.

Because the book is a story about the romance industry, there are some red-hot scenes. This is not a sweet, chaste novel. However, unlike a romance, the love scenes are not a major part of the plotline. Indeed, much tongue-in-cheek is involved in the dialogue. And the many threads are untangled and explained. And maybe a bit of HEA for more than one couple, too.