Synopsis:
Sometimes you have to escape to be found.
Kate wasn’t expecting a proposal, but when Rob pushed the small velvet box across the table how could she not get her hopes up? Those hopes dashed by a pair of pearl earrings, Kate decides it’s time to hit reset on her life. This time next year, she’ll have the life, job, relationship of her dreams. But then Rob drops a bombshell: he wants to move to America, for work, and without Kate. Shattered and heart-broken, her mum’s “there’s still time, if you get a move on”, her best friend Sonia’s engagement news, and – best of all – her seven-year-old niece Ottilie’s thoughtful suggestion that “Auntie K could borrow Daddy to be the daddy for her baby” do not make her feel better…
Leaving the pieces of her old life behind, Kate retreats to her sister’s ramshackle farm, where handsome handyman Dan is a welcome distraction. But it soon becomes apparent that underneath the idyllic surface, not all is as it appears at the farm – and whilst Kate didn’t go there looking for a new beginning, she might not be the only one to find one…
Review:
I don’t even know where to start with this review. I can’t lie, I definitely got The Reset mixed up with a different book as I thought this was a magical realism book about a time loop or something. I definitely have an audiobook in my library that fits this description so you could imagine my disappointment when I realised this is a contemporary and not a fun one at that. Who’s surprised that yet another Audible original romance isn’t great? Not me, that’s for sure.
You’re probably questioning why I continue to check this out at this point and honestly, that’s because there have been some genuinely great Audible originals.
Anyway, The Reset is joining my rapidly growing pile of 2026 DNFs. I got 53% in and pretty much nothing had happened other than Kate getting dumped and visiting her family. I’m assuming the Dan guy she meets while visiting her family is the love interest but they’ve honestly shared about four sentences with each other so far. This isn’t a very long audiobook so I’m not sure how developed their relationship is, but at the end of the day The Reset was about Kate, not romance – even though it’s described as a romcom (there wasn’t anything remotely funny happening).
Let’s start with our main character shall we? Kate is very judgemental. She has to make a comment about the appearance of every single person she meets. This is obviously because she’s extremely insecure. The whole spiel she goes on about all her beauty products and how necessary they all are made this very obvious. I’ll give her a little bit of slack as her boyfriend (now ex) was a big factor towards her being insecure, but my god. I hate characters like this, especially when it’s women dragging down other women. It feels like we should be past this by now.
She also thinks the world is constantly against her, especially her family. But in reality they actually just know exactly who she is as a person. She’s extremely hard to like.
Don’t even get me started on Rob, her now ex boyfriend. He’s one of the biggest walking red flags I’ve ever seen. Firstly, who thinks about taking a job abroad without even mentioning it to your partner of multiple years, who you live with, beforehand? That’s wild. Secondly, he definitely thought he was the bee’s knees. I’m pretty sure Kate describes their life in the bedroom as boring (hilarious) and he seems just outright awful. I’d question why she stayed with him for so long but bringing back my earlier point of her being deeply insecure makes it make sense.
I can’t remember enough about the narration to make any comments on it but I do know it was very slow as I was listening at a higher speed than normal.
The Reset is not a book I’d recommend checking out. Well unless you like books with no story and unlikeable characters.
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