There’s this set of books by Lauren Willig called the Pink Carnation series, and I absolutely love them.
They're a ridiculously fun mix of chicklit and historical fiction that follow an American grad student and the 19th-century British spies she’s researching for her thesis.
I’ve read every single one of these books. Moreover, I own every single one of these books. They’re proudly displayed on one of my more prominent bookshelves at home. And every time I look at them, I’m reminded of lighthearted thrills, romantic entanglements and lots of laughs.
Because that’s what they boil down to: good-time reading for lazy days.
Yet when I listened to one of them – The Mischief of the Mistletoe – on audiobook last month, none of that saved me from feeling like squales were after me all over again.
(If you don’t remember the squales, that's because you weren't following me in 2016. And since I didn't bring 2016's blog posts over to this new site, you're straight out of luck. Might as well just keep reading. Or you could always shoot me an email for a proper explanation.)
If it sounds ridiculous to equate something called The Mischief of the Mistletoe with blood-sucking, world-wrecking, utterly terrifying alien monsters, that’s because it is.
There’s no comparison between the two. Yet I once again found myself on the edge of the driver’s seat while listening to an audiobook, wishing I could magically make the narrator speed-speak by pressing the gas pedal a little harder.
Since it doesn’t really work that way, I instead had to grit my teeth for hours on end as the two main characters took the most circuitous route ever to their happily ever after.
I knew they were going to end up together. I would have known they were going to end up together even if I’d never read the book or the rest of the series. It’s that obvious.
And yet, listening to it on audiobook felt like pulling squales’ teeth.
So much for only listening to insipid chicklit. I think I'll play it safe and just stick to good old fashioned reading my books from now on.