🎧ARC Review: The Grump Who Stole Summer by Ella Fields

My review: 3.5⭐

Alice is fresh off a scandal and kicked out of college. Her mom is making her work at the local bookstore. She’s an aspiring writer and book lover, so she doesn’t put up a fight about it. But when she sees who works there too, she hightails it right out of there because there’s no way she can be around the guy that broke her heart 3 years ago. Resigning to her mother’s demands, she makes the best of an uncomfortable situation.

Charles, who goes by Smith, co-owns a bookstore with his father. He is one of the grumpiest, grumps I have ever read about. He’s rude to customers, smokes in the store, the place is just a disaster and he drinks up a storm. And now he has to work with the girl he pushed away years ago. Think it’ll be all sunshine and lollipops? nope.

I love that it was told in dual pov in the present and back 4 years prior when these two first met. Both characters were immature and had a lot of growing up to do and as the story progresses they finally matured. Smith’s big secret will both break your heart for him and wonder what the big whoop is.

Okay so I’ve been known to swear a time or two or 807, but holy moly I’ve never heard the f word so many times in one book. I wonder if I would have noticed it as much if I read it. It felt like I was hearing it every other paragraph.

Kelsey-Ann O’Dowd and Brian Meslar did a lovely job narrating for 9 hours and 22 minutes, easy to follow along at 2x. One thing about Brian though, his voice does not sound like he’s in his 20’s, more like 40’s maybe, but he definitely gives off the gruff grumpy tones.

This is a friends to enemies to lovers, second chance romance for a couple in their early 20’s. I was happy they finally figured out their misunderstandings and got their happily ever after.

*Thanks to OrangeSky Audio, Ella Fields and NetGalley for the advance audiobook. I am voluntarily leaving my honest review*

⬇Purchase links⬇

Book blurb: Book available now ~ audio release date ~ August 9, 2022

USA Today bestselling author, Ella Fields, returns to contemporary romance with an all-new angsty enemies to lovers standalone.

I never meant to hurt her.
Okay, so that might be a lie. The truth is, I just… panicked.

My soul died when I was fourteen, and there was no reviving it. But when the one person who’d tried made headlines, got dumped by her Ivy League college, and was forced to work in my bookstore, I began to wonder if I needed it when my heart beat faster at just the sight of her.

I began to wonder if I’d been wrong to push her away three years ago, and if she was as I’d hoped and feared—different. If maybe, she could truly accept a guy like me.
All of me. Every vile, cruel, tattered piece.

First, I had to find out a few things.
Would she still smile and laugh when I said something acidic?
Would she still melt beneath the pads of my inexperienced fingers?
Did she still want me as much as I wanted her?
And finally, could she ever forgive an undeserving prick like me?
Something told me I’d regret not finding out.

Told in dual POV, The Grump Who Stole Summer is a full-length standalone, enemies to lovers second chance romance. It contains some sensitive subject matter.

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