Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.
Title: Beautiful Stranger
Subtitle: Chance Encounters, Book 2
Author: Hedonist Six
Narrator: Katie Bunn
Format: Unabridged
Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
Language: English
Release date: 06-19-17
Publisher: eXplicitTales
Genres: Romance, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
Age and wealth are just numbers, right? Twenty-four-year-old Claudia has always been the sensible one. From her boring call centre job right down to her practical wardrobe; flash and extravagant are not part of her normal vocabulary. She may live in Ascot, the home of British horse racing, but the presence of all the moneyed revelers blocking her route home from work are more of a nuisance than a thrill. Until one of them catches her eye...
Peter's life couldn't be more different. All his life he's worked hard to make it in the banking industry, to give his wife all she's ever wanted. After a day of sipping champagne and watching the races, an indiscretion of hers with Peter's colleague changes this picture-perfect vision of middle class life forever. He decides to cut and run, only he hasn't a clue where he's going.
A chance meeting by the side of the road brings them together, making them forget their opposing backgrounds. Is passion alone enough to overcome their differences?
Chance Encounters is a series of standalone novellas set in jolly old England, following a set of loosely connected people as they find love in unexpected places. Can love conquer all, from class differences to age gaps? Listen and find out.
Series listening order:
One Night Stand
Beautiful Stranger
Only a Taste
Members Reviews:
Not worth more than three stars.
Peter's wife cheats on him with his supposed best friend. Claudia happens to come along shortly after he finds out. They make love shortly after their first meeting, and then he goes 4 months before reaching out to her again. His normal way to solve a problem is to throw money at it, and he's adjusting to not having that option with Claudia. I found it sweet that she flat-out told him she wasn't interested in his money, that she just wanted to get to know him better. I liked that she wasn't afraid to tell him what she wanted and to ask for it.
I found the story predictable, and kind of boring. The characters are mildly likable, but I'm not getting the curvy-woman vibe from Claudia. Unless she's a size-12 instead of a 22 (which would not qualify as BBW). She seems a lot younger than the 24 years old she's supposed to be, and she's definitely not a plus-sized gal. Peter, too, also seemed more late-20s/early-30s rather than early-40s. His glaring flaw was to have sex with a complete stranger the same night they meet, without protection. To me, it read more like he was getting his own back at his ex-wife for cheating.
I was offended on Claudia's behalf when her car broke down. She had just lost her job and was in the process of considering her options, when he just told her to get into his car and he immediately took her to a used-car lot with the intention of buying her a new car when she was clearly in no position to make a decision on her own. And I really didn't like the fact that he couldn't see a problem with what he'd tried to do, and made her feel like an unreasonable toddler for not just immediately accepting his offer of help. I would be outraged and offended, the same way she was. Especially when he'd shucked his job shortly before she'd lost hers.
The story is written in passive voice, with the characters reacting to the environment and circumstances around them, rather than driving the story. There's no narrative thrust. It also needed some serious editing.