Synopsis:
The Rebound is an Audible Original rom-com by Leeane Slade and is narrated by Bridgerton star Claudia Jessie.
Kitty Harris has it all: cosily coupled up with boyfriend Archie, she’s putting in the hours at an ad agency to land her dream job. OK, so maybe they’ve become a bit too comfortable in their routine, with pizza night every Thursday, and maybe the agency isn’t so much up-and-coming as been-and-gone, but Kitty is happy.
Until one diamond ring sitting pretty in her pepperoni ruins everything. Kitty does NOT want to get married, not after being caught in the crosshairs of her parent’s destructive divorce. Desperate not to lose Archie altogether, Kitty suggests a summer-long break so she can turn her ‘I don’t’ into ‘I do’. Somehow.
Enter Leo Evans, Kitty’s impeccably dressed advertising nemesis who loves to appear at the very worst moment. Needing a distraction of his own, Leo claims to have the cure for Kitty’s cold feet: a no-strings rebound fling and a ten-date plan to face her marriage fears. Kitty shouldn’t really be fraternizing with the gorgeous enemy, not when they’re about to go head-to-head for the biggest pitch of their careers, but if it means getting her happily-ever-after with Archie, it’s a risk she’s willing to take.
This rebound is about to get complicated. Luckily, you can’t catch feelings when you’re still madly in love with someone else…right?
Review:
I didn’t have particularly high expectations going into The Rebound as I did pick it up purely because Claudia Jessie is the narrator. Surprisingly, I actually really enjoyed this. The characters were great, with a ton of good development and the story moved at a decent pace with a lot of flirty banter. That’s a winner if you ask me.
I usually find it somewhat difficult to pay attention to audiobooks with just one narrator but Claudia Jessie did a phenomenal job. I think it’s because I know her voice so well, plus the voices she put on for other characters didn’t make me cringe, which is an incredible feat.
While I did really enjoy The Rebound, I do think it’s longer than it needed to be. Every time I thought the story was coming to a close it just kept going. Thankfully I did really enjoy listening to it, otherwise this would have severely impacted its rating. However, I do love a silly little romance so I wasn’t really that bothered, I’m just being dramatic.
I don’t want to continue being dramatic but I absolutely despised Archie from the get-go. Why would you propose to your long time girlfriend if you know she never wants to get married? Obviously that’s not the worst thing in the world. Oh no, that comes next. Kitty does the mature thing by saying she wants to take some time to work on her issues with marriage by spending some time apart. The first thing he does, literally hours after they have this conversation, is sleep with another woman IN THEIR BED. If I were Kitty I wouldn’t give him the time of day. That’s relationship over forever in my eyes.
He doesn’t get any better as the book progresses. They agree to meet at the end of the summer to talk about the proposal and what they’ll do next. I don’t want to spoil what goes down at this meeting as it’s late book content, but he admits to sleeping with 15 women over the summer (six weeks) and does something so ridiculous it made my skin crawl. He’s one of the most self centred book characters I’ve ever come across and you only spend around four chapters in his presence. Ugh.
Anyway onto a character I loved, Kitty. She’s a breath of fresh air–willing to admit she has a problem and is doing everything she can to fix it. Not that I think a fear of marriage is a problem, it’s fairly normal to not want to get married. However, she does go to therapy for this and actually does what the therapist suggests, making her a better more self-assured person. We love strong female characters.
I also really liked Leo. For the most part, he was a great communicator making it very clear to Kitty that he can’t offer her a relationship. I love it when book characters actually say what they want instead of leaving things up for interpretation leading to my least favourite trope; miscommunication. There was a little bit of this at the end, which was fairly frustrating, but as a rom-com you know things will work out eventually.
Overall, I would recommend you check out The Rebound, especially if you have Audible Plus as it’s free with the subscription. While I did say it was a little too long, you almost don’t mind as you don’t want Claudia Jessie’s narration to end.
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