Audio Review: Love in a Nutshell (Culhane Family, #1)

Author: Janet Evanovich, Dorien Kelly
Narrator: Lorelei King
Series: Culhane Family, #1
Release date: January 3rd 2012
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Lenght: 6 hrs and 37 mins
Buy: Audible

Kate Appleton needs a job. Her husband has left her, she’s been fired from her position as a magazine editor, and the only place she wants to go is to her parents’ summer house, The Nutshell, in Keene’s Harbor, Michigan. Kate’s plan is to turn The Nutshell into a Bed and Breakfast. Problem is, she needs cash, and the only job she can land is less than savory.
Matt Culhane wants Kate to spy on his brewery employees. Someone has been sabotaging his company, and Kate is just new enough in town that she can insert herself into Culhane’s business and snoop around for him. If Kate finds the culprit, Matt will pay her a $20,000 bonus. Needless to say, Kate is highly motivated. But several problems present themselves. Kate despises beer. No one seems to trust her. And she is falling hard for her boss.
Can these two smoke out a saboteur, save Kate’s family home, and keep a killer from closing in…all while resisting their undeniable attraction to one another? Filled with humor, heart, and loveable characters, Love in a Nutshell is delicious fun

These days, my brainpower has been as low as it can possibly get with me still alive to tell you about it. Considering the circumstances, I was in desperate need of something my bestie Lisa would classify as a “two-neuron book”, and Janet Evanovich seemed like a pretty sure bet.

An even safer bet, however, was Lorelei King’s excellent narration. I love her work with the Mercy Thompson series, I enjoy her narration of Stephanie Plum, and I downright adore her as the real-life voice of Charley Davidson. There is not a book in this world that Lorelei couldn’t make infinitely better. When Love in a Nutshell threatened to become dull and uneventful, Lorelei combined her excellent voice characterization and her charm to make it more interesting.

Love in a Nutshell is exactly what you’d expect: a light, entertaining, romantic book that begs to be read in a single sunny afternoon. There is no angst, no conflict to speak of and plenty of sexual tension to make one’s skin tingle.

Matt is the perfect hero – gorgeous, funny, kind and loyal to a fault. When Kate marches into his office demanding a job, he is determined to get to know her better. She is someone he can trust and maybe love, and once his course is set, he patiently works to achieve his goal. Still hurt from her awful first marriage, Kate is a bit more reluctant to start something with Matt, but his charm and good looks combined with his persistence prove impossible to resist.

There is a bit of a mystery thrown into the mix, but it’s pretty straightforward and, admittedly, somewhat uninteresting. Someone is trying to sabotage Matt’s micro brewery and he hires Kate to be his eyes and ears among the employees. While I didn’t even come close to guessing the identity of this person, I can’t say I was particularly interested either. My focus was on Kate, Matt and the development of their romance… in other words, right where it should have been.

Although welcome (to an extent), mystery and conflict weren’t my reason for reading this – I chose it because of Janet Evanovich’s trademark sense of humor, which is exactly what I got from it. It wasn’t without flaws, but I didn’t much care: I laughed, I smiled, and I relaxed.