Book: Second chance scottish by Tricia O'Malley
Reviewed by Anonymous
Rating: 3/5
I had high hopes for this book, but unfortunately I think the audio let it down. This is a dual narration, not duet. The male narrator doing the book bitches (elderly scottish women), reminded me Brave when King Fergus is pretending to be Princess Merida. It's amusing for a ten second clip in a movie where it's meant to be comedic. It's not great to listen to throughout the book. There's a time where we're getting American and Italian accents, which are....also not good.
I've read some of Tricia O'Malley's books, primarily from the Enchanted Highlands series and generally enjoy them, though I've not read all of them. I believe this is set in the same town as her other standalone holiday romances. There are a couple references to characters that seemed to hint at them being cameos, and even though I've not read it, I did recognize the name of the Highland Hearts Holiday Bookshop that they visit in this book as the title of another of her books. This did read perfectly fine as a standalone - if you've read her others, you might pick up on more easter eggs.
One of the things I love about Tricia's books is how much you can tell she's a huge reader herself and loves the book community. I could tell from the start that I was going to love the book bitches (actual name of their book club), which was a book club primarily comprised of older women unabashedly reading primarily smutty romances. I absolutely love that. I loved every single one of them, and the part they play in this story. I actually liked them a fair bit more than I did either of our main characters unfortunately.
There is some great banter and one-liners in this book. One I made a note of was describing glitter as traitorous stuff with the survival instincts of a cockroach.
There were some elements I found either inconsistent or hard to believe which pulled me out of it a bit. Our FMC runs a bed & breakfast, and within the first couple chapters we hear about how it's slow and she can't afford to turn away bookings, and then shortly after that, we're hearing about how it's Christmas and all the inns are booked. There were some other things along those veins that pulled me out of the story, but will not go into specifics to avoid spoilers.
Overall, this was very much a 3 star, middle of the road book for me. I considered DNFing knowing early on that it was likely going to be just 3 stars. However, I needed an audiobook while doing chores that I'd be able to put down without it distracting me too much from my main read, and this fit that bill. I still generally enjoy Tricia's writing and will continue to read from her, but I don't think this was her best work and it was also let down by the audio.
Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book!