Clara’s Verdict
A hundred and seventeen thousand ratings is not a readership. It is a weather system. The Mistake carries 4.2 out of 5 from 117,614 ratings, and the interesting part of that pairing is not the volume but the average. In my experience of numbers this size, a 4.2 means a substantial minority of a very large crowd had reservations, and having read what the reviewers here actually say, I think I can tell you what those reservations are.
The recording itself is ten hours and eleven minutes of Lorelei Avalon and Lee Samuels, put out by Audible Studios on 3 November 2015. The listing carries no series information whatsoever, which is odd, because two of the three reviewers state plainly that this is the second book in Elle Kennedy’s Off-Campus books. Treat it as a sequel and plan accordingly.
About the Audiobook
The description gives each of them roughly equal space, and that balance tells you what kind of book this is before a word of plot arrives. On his side: John Logan is a hockey star in his third year at university, living “a parade of parties and hook-ups” and hiding “growing despair about the dead-end road he’ll be forced to walk after graduation” behind the charm. On hers: Grace Ivers is back at Briar University after a poor first year, “older, wiser, and so over the arrogant hockey player she nearly handed her V-card to”.
What lifts this above its own premise, at least on the evidence of the copy, is the despair. The marketing sells a hockey player chasing a second chance, and the second-chance plot is certainly the engine, but the thing that gives Logan somewhere to go is that he is frightened of what happens when the sport stops. That is a real subject, and it is more than this corner of the genre usually bothers with.
Grace’s half of the book is framed as a corrective. She is “not a charity case”, she will not “roll over and beg like all his other puck bunnies”, and the copy promises that this time she will be “the one in the driver’s seat”. Whether the book delivers on that the reviews do not settle. What they do argue about is Grace herself, and I will come to that below.
The Narration
Casting two narrators for a book that gives both leads this much room is a promising sign, and not a call I take for granted. Lorelei Avalon and Lee Samuels share the recording, though the listing does not say how the parts are divided. A duet cast earns its keep in one place above all others, which is banter. Shannon Brown’s four-star review calls this “a hockey rom com with epic banter that is hard to put down”, and banter is the hardest thing for a single narrator to carry, because the comic timing lives in the gap between two people rather than inside either of them.
The corresponding risk is also specific to duet recordings. Two performers recorded separately can arrive at quite different energies, and when that happens the exchanges stop sounding like conversation and start sounding like two monologues stapled together. Nothing in the reviews settles which way this one goes. None of the three so much as glances at the performance, and each of them writes in the vocabulary of the page.
One practical note before you commit. If you sample this, choose a scene with both performers in it rather than the opening pages, because the banter is the selling point and banter is precisely the thing you cannot judge from one voice working alone. Two of the reviewers describe being unable to put the book down, and one finished it in a rush. In audio, that reads as a book you will overshoot your stop for.
What Readers Say
At the top of the range the enthusiasm is unreserved. CerysAnne opens with this: “Instantly, from the first few lines I was already hooked with The Mistake and in love with John Logan.” The same review lists the originality of the storyline, the humour and the romance among its reasons, then delivers the line that explains the series’ staying power: “It’s only the second book of the Off-Campus series, but it’s already my favourite”.
The three-star review is where the real value is, and it is the answer to the question I flagged earlier. Sophie is “a bit torn”, and the objection is Grace: “At the start she’s portrayed as being too nervous to even speak to boys, but within a few chapters she’s confidently inviting Logan into her bedroom and creating a rather ridiculous love list.” The sharpest line is that “the character development felt rushed and inconsistent, which made it hard for me to connect with her”. The review then begins a “That said” and is cut off there, so I cannot tell you what the qualification was. What is clear is that the nervous Grace of the opening and the assured Grace of a few chapters later did not read as the same person.
Two of these three reviews were posted in June 2026, more than ten years after this recording was released. A book still recruiting new readers a decade on is doing something durable, whatever the average says about the spread of opinion. It is also the clearest sign that the 4.2 is a live, contested number and not a settled one.
Who Should Listen?
Sports romance has a clear set of conventions and this book meets every one of them: campus setting, hockey, banter, a second chance, and a heroine who has decided to stop apologising. If that list makes you happy, ten hours will pass easily, and two narrators are a genuine argument for choosing audio over print here.
Two cautions. The first is characterisation, because if inconsistency ruins a book for you, the sharpest review in this set lands precisely there. The second is heat: the copy trades openly on hook-ups, a V-card and a heroine who plans to drive her hockey player wild, and two voices make that considerably less private than a paperback on the train. Check the sequence too, since the reviewers place this second in the Off-Campus books without naming the first, and the listing offers no help at all.
