Okay, I have a small complaint to open with: nobody warned me that I'd be sitting in my garage for an extra twenty minutes past my allotted car time because I could not — physically could not — stop the chapter. Lucas knocked on the garage door from inside the house at some point. I just turned up the volume. Mom of the year, right here.
So. To Hate Adam Connor. Let me tell you about this book.
The Part Where I Defend Listening to This Instead of Something 'Important'
I went in fully prepared to like this less than To Love Jason Thorn. I'd loved that one and figured this was the obligatory 'second book in the series that's fine but not quite as good' situation. I was wrong. Dead wrong. The premise sounds like every other enemies-to-lovers romance — hot famous neighbor, misunderstanding, jail (okay, the jail thing is specific) — but what Ella Maise actually does is sneak a genuinely sweet, slightly broken family story underneath all the banter. That layered-underneath-the-banter emotional gut-punch is something I also ran straight into with Jealous Kind: A Novel, which looks like a straightforward romance on the surface and then quietly wrecks you. Adam's son. That's all I'll say. The kid storyline hit me somewhere I was not prepared to be hit, and I was standing in my kitchen unloading the dishwasher when it happened, which is a deeply undignified place to get emotional.
The 'curse' subplot — the reason our heroine thinks she can't have this — sounds like it should be eye-roll territory. And honestly? For about fifteen minutes I was skeptical. But Maise earns it. The big twist lands. I actually gasped out loud in the school pickup line and Emma asked me if I was okay from the backseat. I said yes. I was not okay. I was thriving.
Lidia Dornet and Sebastian York Are Doing Actual Work Here
Dual narrators can go so wrong. I've listened to audiobooks where the two narrators have completely different energy levels and it feels like watching two separate movies spliced together. Not here. Lidia Dornet's delivery for the heroine has this perfect comedic timing — there's a scene where she's mentally catastrophizing about the neighbor situation and Dornet's internal-monologue voice is so dry and panicked at the same time that I genuinely laughed out loud during nap time, which is how I almost woke Sophie up and lost the entire afternoon. Worth it, though. Barely.
Sebastian York as Adam is — look, the man has a voice that was built for this specific type of character. The dirty talk scenes (yes, there are dirty talk scenes, this is a heads up if you're listening with kids in the car, learn from my near-mistakes) are delivered with exactly the right amount of 'I know exactly what I'm doing' energy. The dual narration also makes the emotional scenes hit harder because you get both perspectives in their own distinct registers. By the time you're in the third act, you're not just hearing two narrators — you're hearing two people who are clearly falling for each other even when the words are saying otherwise.
At 11 hours 46 minutes, this is a solid week of my listening schedule. I finished it in six days, which means it survived approximately forty-seven pauses, two complete nap-time failures, one school drop-off where I sat in the parking lot for an extra ten minutes, and the aforementioned garage incident. Survived all of it. Came back every single time feeling immediately oriented. That's the real test for me.
Who This Is For (And Who Should Probably Skip It)
If you like your romance with actual humor — not 'she's clumsy and quirky' humor but genuinely funny, fast dialogue — this is for you. If you need a book that can be paused and resumed without losing the thread, this is for you. If you read To Love Jason Thorn and wanted more Ella Maise, absolutely start this immediately.
If you need your romance to be emotionally low-stakes and you're already running on empty, maybe save this for a week when you have a little more bandwidth. The emotional gut-punch moments are real. I cried at school pickup. It was worth it — but I'm flagging it so you can make informed choices about your mascara.
Car time approved. High praise.
