Clara’s Verdict
Every one of the three reviews attached to this listing is discussing a Sarah Morgan novel. The author credited on the listing is Aubrey L. Carter. I am putting that at the top rather than tucking it away at the bottom, because you should know it before you commit nearly ten hours of listening, and because a discrepancy that plain deserves saying out loud.
Here is what is not in dispute. Nine hours and fifty-five minutes, narrated by Jennifer Woodward, published by HarperCollins Publishers Limited in October 2017, sixth in the From Manhattan with Love series. Its 2,781 ratings average 4.5. My verdict: a warm, competent and deliberately undemanding December romance, and a credit worth thirty seconds of checking before you press buy.
About the Audiobook
The premise is a good one and it gives the book a spine that a lot of seasonal romance lacks. Harriet Knight, “determined to conquer a lifetime of shyness”, sets herself a rule for the month: “one thing a day in December that scares her”, starting with celebrating Christmas away from her family. That structure turns the month into a countdown and the countdown into a plot, which is why I think it works better as a nightly listen than most of its shelf-mates.
The complication arrives on four legs. Harriet is a dog walker, her newest client is “exuberant spaniel Madi”, and Madi comes with a temporary dog-sitter in the form of a gruff doctor named Ethan Black. Ethan’s answer to canine chaos is a contract: he offers to pay her to move into his New York apartment and look after the animal around the clock. The copy is candid that nothing about how she makes him feel is similarly simple, and the Miranda Dickinson endorsement quoted at the top of the description sets the register precisely: “I loved every sparkly, big-hearted, warm-hug moment of this gorgeous wintry tale”.
This is the sixth book, and one reviewer explains what that means in practice. Harriet has appeared in the earlier volumes as the shy one, “present but not really participating very much”, and “usually protected by her twin sister and her brother”, until the twin sister leaves for the Hamptons. That review is cut off mid-sentence at exactly that point, so I cannot tell you the rest of it. You can begin here, since the setup is fully explained in the copy, but you will meet a heroine the earlier volumes have already introduced. If you like taking a series in order, this is stop number six.
The Narration
Jennifer Woodward reads, and no reviewer on this listing mentions the narration at all, so treat what follows as a reading of what the book demands rather than a report from the studio. The central difficulty is Harriet. A protagonist whose defining trait is shyness is among the hardest things in commercial romance to narrate, because her interior life has to carry more than her dialogue does, and the narrator has to keep her present while she is being quiet. Play the shyness too broadly and she becomes a child. Play it too flat and the December challenges stop costing her anything.
Ethan brings a familiar problem with him. Gruff, in this genre, sits about a semitone away from unpleasant, and the whole difference lives in delivery. A narrator has to let his brusqueness read as competence under pressure instead of rudeness, or the listener spends the middle third of the book wondering why Harriet stays in the apartment at all.
Then there is the dog. Madi is not decoration but the comic engine of the book, and mayhem set pieces need timing that a straight read will not supply. Nearly ten hours is a full-length listen, roughly a fortnight of half-hour commutes, so pace matters here more than it would in a shorter seasonal novella. I would sample it before committing. Nobody on this listing can tell you how it sounds.
What Readers Say
The score is healthy for a sixth instalment. The three reviews attached are all warm, and every one of them is written about the book rather than about listening to it. Itssandrini gives five stars for “a wonderful heartwarming cosy read” and calls it “a story you can cosy on down to & just lose yourself”. Jade C Mack, also at five stars, is a returning series reader who says the sixth book did not disappoint and traces Harriet’s arc back through the earlier volumes.
Cymraes had never read this author before, which is why that verdict is the one worth having: “This was the first time I have read a Sarah Morgan novel but I will definitely read more when I’m looking for a light-hearted but well-written novel.” The same review sets expectations correctly, noting that “it wasn’t a taxing read but it was lovely to read a relaxing, romantic and happy story while on holiday”. That is the book, described accurately by somebody with no prior loyalty to it.
Which brings me back to the byline. All three of these reviewers name Sarah Morgan as the author, and one of them names the series, From Manhattan with Love, which is the series named on this listing. The listing itself credits Aubrey L. Carter. I cannot resolve that from the information in front of me and I will not guess at it. What I can tell you is that the reviews point one way while the author credit points another, and that is a discrepancy worth clearing up before you buy.
Who Should Listen?
If your December listening runs to fairy lights, an unlikely flatshare and a spaniel causing structural damage, this is squarely aimed at you. It suits readers who like their romance low in heat and high in warmth, dog owners, and anyone who wants a book that will not ask hard questions at the end of a long day. It also rewards series completists, since it pays off a heroine introduced in earlier volumes.
Give it a miss if you want heat, edge or genuine jeopardy. Nothing here is designed to keep you awake, and by book six the series knows exactly which of your buttons it is pressing. And if the author credit matters to you as much as it would to me, settle that question first.
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