Audiobook Review: Misdirected by Lucy Parker

youngcreativepress

8 months ago

Synopsis:

Misdirected is dual narrated by Nicola Coughlan and Gwilym Lee.

Hattie Murton never dreamed of TV stardom. A straight-from-a-fairytale encounter with a casting agent somehow landed her a part on what she’d thought would be a one-off pilot for Leicester Square, a bodice-ripping drama adapted from a bestselling romance novel. Buoyed by a surge in demand for romantic dramas, the show instead propelled its core cast to household-name status within a month.

Hattie tries to look on the positive side of all situations, but four seasons of brutal press, overly invested fans, and a cutthroat industry that’s never quite felt like the right fit would give even Pollyanna an edge of cynicism. And high on the ‘con’ list when it comes to her current and unintended career is having to share a set and some horrendously early starts with Anthony Rafe. Leicester Square villain. A-lister. Absolute prat.

In the new season’s scripts, it appears that her previously sane, rational character is about to lose her mind and begin an unexpected and unsettlingly graphic affair with the series villain. Forced into close—very close and very…intimate—proximity with the man everyone loves to hate, Hattie’s horror is matched only by Anthony’s drawling disdain. But when very real chemistry sparks during their scripted love scenes, Hattie begins to think the industry’s legendarily heartless Bad Guy might just have a pulse after all. And Anthony, for his part, is caught off-guard by the way his heart races when he’s around his aggravating onscreen lover.

As reality starts to imitate art a little too close for comfort, the world’s most unlikely couple might just have more in common than they thought…

Synopsis:

I finished Misdirected a few days ago and I still don’t really know what I thought of it. The biggest reason why I wanted to listen to it was because Nicola Coughlan was one of the narrators, which is hilarious considering her character is in a Bridgerton-style show.

What wasn’t hilarious was how long it took me to get into this book. I thought that because Nicola was narrating this it would be a really entertaining read, but I’m sad to say that I don’t think she did a stellar job with the narration. She did a good job, but it wasn’t as good as I expected, which could be down to the contents of the book, not her acting skills – we all know she’s an excellent actor.

I’m actually a little surprised that I finished listening to Misdirected. After just two chapters I was seriously considering DNF’ing it. I wasn’t vibing with the characters and the plot felt disjointed. It also didn’t help that 90% of the chapters were over 30 minutes long, so you can imagine how slow the pace was.

I decided to give Misdirected a second chance and put it on while I walked to my local shops. This actually gave me a chance to get into the book more, but I still wasn’t completely sold. I think after this I was so far in that it felt like a waste to not finish it. Plus, I was enjoying the scenes about filming the show.

The romance part of Misdirected felt a little off. I don’t know if I zoned out and missed something but Hattie and Anthony seemed to go from general dislike to almost making out every 5 seconds really quickly. They did have chemistry and I liked that their friendship was built through sharing childhood memories and details about their families, but I was a little confused – definitely my fault, not the story.

I think the romance would be more believable if this was told in duet. It always confuses me why audiobooks with multiple narrators don’t have them reading their own character’s dialogue. Obviously this takes more effort editing-wise, but it would add more dynamic and the long chapters wouldn’t have seemed so long – if that makes sense?

I usually take a lot of notes while listening to audiobooks as I can do both at the same time, but I had no real thoughts or opinions towards Misdirected. It was entertaining enough for me to give it a decent rating, but nothing really stood out to me as either bad or good.