Since You've Been Gone by Samantha Chase Narrated by Carly Robins

I received an audiobook arc from NetGalley and Dreamscape Media.

I quickly recognized the narrator as the same narrator from The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang so I was very pleased with that. Fantastic narration and excellent sound quality. 

I have not read this author before. This is #8 in her Magnolia Sound series. However I don’t feel like I was missing much info by not having read the previous books. 

This is a small town second chance romance one person stayed one returns situation. Being from a small town myself some of the drama is relatable. However some plot points lacked support. The hero struggled in school so much that the heroine tutored him when they children and with extreme tutoring he made Cs. But then went on to “graduate at the top of his class” at vet school. One of my very good friends is a vet. And vet school is hard. And she is super smart. She was my college roommate and was at undergrad on a full ride academic scholarship and even she said Vet school was hard. Of course there’s no reason that someone with a learning disorder couldn’t become an amazing vet but it didn’t make sense that all of a sudden he would go from Cs with tutoring to As without additional explanation.

There’s almost no reference to any actual veterinary shop talk other than “exams”. My friend constantly had crazy stories from internships in vet school. It made it feel that the career was a fluffy accessory. 

If this kind of thing doesn’t bother you then you’ll like the book better than I did. 

This is a fade to black, closed door, low steam romance where they are vague about the physical interactions. 

The relationship conflict arc largely stemmed from avoidable miscommunications and lack of talking things out. The other situational conflict arcs were more interesting but minimally resolved and while it does not end on a cliffhanger it makes sense that it’s part of a series and may be resolved in a later book. 

It can be a little saccharine sweet but sometimes that is what someone is looking for. So if that’s you, Enjoy! For me this was 3.5/5 stars