Charlie All Night

By: Jennifer Crusie

Narrated by: Sandra Caldwell

Dumped by her boyfriend and demoted from WBBB's prime-time spot, radio producer Allie McGuffey has nowhere to go but up. She plans to make her comeback by turning temporary DJ Charlie Tenniel into a household name. And if he's willing to help cure her breakup blues with a rebound fling, that's an added bonus.

Charlie just wants to kick back, play good tunes and eat Chinese food. He's not interested in becoming famous. But he is interested in Allie. And after all, what harm is a little chemistry between friends?

But suddenly, their one-night stand has become a four-week addiction. Night after night on the airwaves, his voice seduces her...and all the other women in town. He's a hit. It looks as if Charlie's solved all Allie's problems...except one. What is she going to do when he leaves?

©2004 Jennifer Crusie (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Jennifer Crusie "has a wicked sense of humor, keen insights into the complexities of modern relationships, and a way of making her characters seem genuine and her stories real." ( Booklist)

Typical early Crusie

Story is good, but the narration is boring. It is just a rather bland reading of the book. All of the characters sound much the same.

Jennifer did it again.

Good story hard to get into at first. Don't know what it was but never had this problem with Jennifers books before. Good story good listen was fun listen. Made great travel time. Just slow start.

Decent story, but boring narration

The story was decent, but definitely nothing special. I'm actually writing this review before I have finished listening because I am having trouble getting myself to finish it. All the voices sound the same, and the narrator just sounds disinterested and has no voice inflection. We'll see if I make it to the end.

Love the characters

Well rounded, sometimes political, story that is set around a radio station dynamic. Love the characters! Could visualize the story really well. I had a hard time with the narrator. The cadence of the narrations was stilted or clipped about 90% of the time. Her tone is great and I could visualize the characters, but had a hard time with the clipped words. Will be listening to more from Jennifer Crusie! Thanks for the Story!

Great

This was a great book, because its the strong girl and guy thing with puppy love

Great read!

Another great book from Jennifer Cruise - fast listen, cute ending...good summer time light hearted listen.

Love it, Love it!

I haven't read or listened to a bad Jennifer Crusie book, ever. I love how there is a pet of some sort in every one and the pet has the heart and the good folks always love the pets.

I truly wish there were more of her books because I think I've read or listened to them all!

The narrator is wonderful too.

Not for me

I couldn’t get past the first chapter. Kind of boring and the narrators voice was calm, but a little to monotone for the emotions the book was describing. I think it just needed a little more emotion.

Not my favorite Crusie

At first listen, I'd say this is an early Crusie, before she got into her groove, but I don't think that's the case. The story just seems immature and hasn't achieved the "community" that her books are known for. It's there a little bit, but without the polish of later books like Faking It or Welcome to Temptation.

I know this one's a favorite of a lot of Crusie fans, but not for me. Of her earlier books, I prefer Getting Rid of Bradley and Anyone But You. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what the difference is, except to say that, although Crusie does tend to shoehorn certain bits of knowledge into her stories (see Bet Me and Getting Rid of Bradley in particular), but Charlie All Night feels like a practice swing for later books. It's still worth listening to.

The narration on this failed for me because of the voices! Aargh, the voices!!! I don't like a single narrator trying to do a different voice for each character. It almost never works, especially in more complex stories. However, Charlie All Night is fairly simple in that sense, yet her voices show so little differentiation that in dialog between the two main characters, it's almost impossible to tell who's speaking until you get to a dialog tag, e.g., "he said," "she said." And, sadly, all too often those tags yanked me right out of the story because they were the opposite of what I'd been thinking. That said, this narrator was pretty solid on characterization, avoiding affectations of speech and not going overboard on creating unique characters -- Crusie's characters tend to be average people but with a kink/quirk.

Listen to the sample before you buy and see how it feels to you.

I feel like I’ve heard the story before!

So story goes that a woman who is having a lull in her career suddenly meets a man in a bar. Little does she know that that man is there with a purpose that he cannot disclose. Just then she finds out that he is one of her newest coworkers. He has a secret. Blah blah blah.
I like the story but as I mentioned before I feel like I’ve heard this storyline so many times. Charlie is here to solve a crime. But the crime is not even that interesting. I still like it. Just a little loosely constructed.