Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips*****

Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved it! I was very happy with the new narrator, Shannon Cochran, too - she almost rises to the level of Kate Fleming/Anna Fields, and although I haven't done a re-listen to the earlier books in a while, I felt like her voices were close enough to the originals.

This is Ted and Meg's book, although when you start, it's Lucy Jorik from First Lady as the bride. Lucy's best friend Meg seems to be the only one who can tell that Lucy and Ted aren't the love-match everyone thinks, and encourages Lucy to follow her heart. Lucy does exactly that - jilting Ted at the altar! Of course, Meg is such a blunt screw-up that she ends up taking the blame, which everyone in Wynette, including Ted, heaps on her. Meg, whose parents have cut off the money to force her to take responsibility, realizes she's stuck there with no money, forced to work at whatever she can find and live out of her car until she can repay the hotel. Over the next several weeks, Meg experiences what Ted's mother Francesca did in her own story (Fancy Pants) - the growth of self-esteem from doing a job well.

It really was such fun to revisit all the citizens of Wynette and the original stories - I was almost disappointed when Lady Emma was mentioned reading Beatrix Potter because I expected her to be reading Daphne The Bunny books! Of course, that was a completely different series, but then how did Glitter Baby, What I Did For Love and First Lady get into the golf series??

I did have the slightest quibble with Cochran's narration - I mean, really I liked it a LOT, and I felt like she followed in Anna Fields' footsteps well. I even thought she sounded a little bit like SEP herself, having heard her in online videos. There were some passages that seemed to drone on and on that she could have livened up somewhat, but overall her voice suited the story well. I'm not sure if I had read the other stories right before this that her other characters would have fared all that well - hearing them sound different might not have worked, but they did seem to match well enough what was in my head.