I was three hours into a rebrand project for a local mezcal bar — color palette spread across my screen, Frida curled on my lap like a furry paperweight — when I realized I'd stopped actually listening to this book and was just... letting it wash over me like background noise. And look, that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes an audiobook becomes ambient. But a romance? About enemies forced into marriage on the Yorkshire moors? That should have me pausing my work to clutch my chest. Instead I was picking hex codes for agave illustrations.
So let me be honest about Make Me Love You.
The Setup Had Me Dreaming in Telenovela
Okay, the premise? Chef's kiss on paper. A prince regent literally ordering two feuding families to marry their kids or lose everything? Brooke Whitworth being shipped off to a remote estate by her garbage brother who's hoping she gets rejected? Abuela would have eaten this up with a spoon. This is straight-up novela energy — the kind of forced-proximity, enemies-to-lovers scenario that should have me ugly-crying by chapter six and texting my friend Mariana screenshots of my tear-streaked face.
And for the first couple hours, it works. Brooke arriving at Dominic "the Wolf" Wolfe's estate (yes, his name is Wolf Wolfe, I cannot make this up), him being all brooding and hostile, her refusing to be intimidated — there's a spark there. Brooke's resourcefulness in those early scenes, the way she just... decides she's going to survive this man and his cursed family and his deliberately awful hospitality? I was rooting for her hard.
But then the story does this thing where it nose-dives from promising into just... going through the motions.
When the Chemistry Runs Out of Oxygen
Here's my problem. The entire premise depends on us believing that two people from families who literally tried to kill each other can fall in love. And I want to believe that — I'm the person who cried four times during Beach Read, I am built for this — but Lindsey doesn't give us enough to bridge that gap. The slow burn I was desperate for here — that grinding, years-long tension — is exactly what Outlander does so punishingly well, and once you've felt that dial turned by the hand of a master, a light switch just doesn't cut it. The shift from hostility to attraction feels like someone flipped a switch rather than slowly turned a dial. One minute Dominic is trying to scare Brooke away, and then he's just... not. Where's the ache? Where's the moment where he catches himself softening and hates himself for it? Where's the scene where Brooke sees something vulnerable in him and it cracks her open?
I kept waiting for that gut-punch scene. The one where you have to pause the audiobook and stare at the ceiling because your feelings are too big for your body. It never came. The end twist that's supposed to shake everything up felt more like a plot device than an emotional earthquake. I finished the book dry-eyed, which for me is basically a failing grade.
Compared to Lindsey's older historicals — the ones that made her a legend — this feels thin. Like a sketch instead of a painting. (Designer brain, sorry.) The bones of something gorgeous are there, but the rendering never gets past the wireframe stage.
Beverley A. Crick Doing the Heavy Lifting
Now, credit where it's absolutely due: Beverley A. Crick is the reason I finished this book. Her narration is steady and warm, and she handles the period dialogue without making it sound stiff or theatrical. She's not Julia Whelan — nobody is Julia Whelan — but she's got a pleasant quality that kept me company through the slower stretches. When the story flagged around hour five, Crick's delivery was the thing keeping me from switching to a podcast. She gave Brooke a quiet determination that the writing sometimes forgot to provide.
That said, the narration doesn't elevate the material the way a truly transcendent performance can. It's competent and likeable. B+ territory, which honestly tracks with what other listeners have said.
Who This Is For (and Who Should Keep Scrolling)
If you're a completist for Johanna Lindsey's catalog, you'll want to listen. If you love forced-marriage historicals and you're okay with the romance developing more on the page than in the feels — go for it, especially on a sale. But if you're like me, if you need your romance to wreck you a little, if you listen to love stories specifically for that chest-tight, tears-on-your-keyboard moment? This one's going to leave you wanting.
I wanted so badly to add this to my crying spreadsheet. Column A stays empty.
Not Every Wolf Bites Deep Enough
This book felt like ordering your favorite comfort meal and getting the presentation but not the flavor. Pretty plate. Decent ingredients. But I walked away still hungry for the thing I came for — that raw, devastating emotional hit that makes romance worth the 9 hours and 40 minutes. Brooke deserved a bigger love story. So did I. That hunger for something rawer and more dangerous is what sent me straight to Beast afterward — brooding hero, high emotional stakes, the works, even if it didn't fully deliver either.
