A freebie from the Audible Plus catalogue, I picked this one up because it was relatively short and I just needed some background noise while I was ironing. It did the job, but unfortunately not much more than that for me. 

At first glance, the premise looks promising; a half-Fae half-Were barista with the usual tragic romantasy backstory quits her job in a fit of pique after zoning out of reality and into one of her loopy aunt's dreams. She's also distracted by the guy she had a childhood crush on (and who left her inside a burning building) walking into the cafe despite hiding from him and his pack for the past decade. There's a semi-sentient amulet sidekick, a mystery to solve and an alpha male to keep things interesting. But the writing just doesn't live up to expectations. It feels incredibly disjointed, with scenes either full of exposition or that seem completely divorced from the main plot. There are moments that, if they stood alone, could come across quite well, but it all just gets a bit lost. The twists and shocks are relatively predictable, and overall the narrative didn't feel that well executed. 

The same issue arises with the characters and their relationships. It's billed as enemies to lovers, which it is, but there's no real development; in a very quick moment, Hedi goes from hating Bridge's  guts to calling him hers, but there's no sense of relief or joy at it for the reader. It just appears from no-where, with none of the emotional attachments that make it feel plausible, let alone realistic. Hedi's decisions and logic made no real sense to me throughout, and even during the denouement I hadn't been drawn into the characters enough to care about them. Bridge is the best drawn character in the book by a long way, but sadly that isn't saying much. The only time I got any sort of flickers of interest was in the moments where they were about to head to the bedroom and the afterglow. The book is closed door, so no actual smut to see here. These scenes were the closest we get to actual feelings and bonding between the two main characters, and honestly I put this down more to the performers of the audio than the writing. 

It does feel like a great base on which to build a world and a series; with some work, I can imagine this offering laughs, tears, gut punches and amazements aplenty. But there is just too much for the reader to do to get there at the moment. 

The audio itself was good - Colleen Delaney puts in another great performance and I was happy to listen to her narrate the story, and it's always fun to play 'spot the ACOTAR voice artist' when listening to the works produced by this company. However, there are moments where the background music/sound effects completely overwhelm the narration, which was really frustrating. This also feels like it relies quite heavily on the background music - I don't remember many times where there wasn't sound there. 

There are three more parts to this series. While I am a little intrigued as to how the story plays out, I really can't find any argument that it's worth me spending my Audible credits on as only this part is free. But I can live with not knowing.