Love Handles

BBW Sweet Romance (Curvy Hips and Sexy Lips, Book 3)

By: Candi Heart

Narrated by: Akaya Birdine

Lately, cute and curvy Emilie Swan has been feeling a little underappreciated.

As a design assistant at a New York City studio, she should be on the path to her dream job in fashion, but she feels more like a glorified gopher than part of the design process. Her boss prefers to promote thinner, more glamorous girls, keeping her in a back office where no one will see her. She keeps herself sane by working on her own projects in her spare time, but even that and a little retail therapy don’t seem to be doing the trick anymore.

Then Nicholas Tessaro drops in for a visit.

Nick is gorgeous and talented, New York’s newest, hottest fashion designer, and he thinks her sketches are worth a second look. Emilie thinks he’s just plain hot. When he offers her a job, she jumps at the chance. Then one lunch date that goes oh-so wrong threatens to ruin everything. Emilie may just lose her dream job and dream man all in one day.

Curvy Hips and Sexy Lips series:

1. Walking Dick
2. Love Handles
3. Sweet Treats
4. Big Escapes

Note: Audiobooks can be listened to in any order. Each is a stand-alone HEA.

©2017 Wanita May (P)2020 Wanita May

Prince Charming rescued Princess Sugar

Great introduction into the story. Relatable Characters & situations. I enjoyed it! Romance with a little Heat.
Great acting and writing. Now, may I please get the other books on AUDIO?😉❤🌟

Needs better narration, production, etc.

Off the bat, I had to really force myself to keep listening, I couldn’t really get past the awful, robotic-style narration, but I wanted to push through, thinking this might be cute. Unfortunately, the narration and sound quality issues aren’t the only problems here.

The content was very generic, and just when I thought it might be cute, it ended. It’s a lot like a million other books I’ve read and TV episodes I’ve watched—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you like reading the same thing over and over again, but with an immature curvy girl thrown in, you might like this.

It does have some fun tropes, with stronger writing, these would be the makings of a fun read.

Set in NYC.
Curvy girl (who talks about nothing else but being curvy and dieting).
Fashion world.
Workplace romance.
Misunderstandings and miscommunication.
An overstepping driver.
Office setting.
Supporting girl besties.


There’s not much character development. One minute, the female lead is a brilliant, over-qualified designer, everyone who meets her is instantly taken by her. The next she’s so stupid that she thinks ice cream is a perfectly fine substitute for her morning ‘smoothie’ while trying to stick to a diet. Or doesn’t understand basic words like ‘vida’ and ‘amore’. Things like this could be jarring.

The steamy scenes were cringe—this author should either use a ghost writer for these bits, or consider writing closed-door romance, IMO. It’d have been more enjoyable to know they were getting down, without having to listen to them fumble through so awkwardly.


🎧 Audio:
Absolutely awful. If you’re going to read this book, and are able, I strongly recommend consuming ANY OTHER format, because the audio is truly a disaster. The quality is poor throughout—for some chapters, there’s an echo, for others, she suddenly sounds under water. I’m baffled as to why the narrator, producer, author and distributor all found this to be an acceptable production—it’s painful to listen to.

Just in case all of that isn’t enough, the narrator opts to not perform this book, but instead just dictates it, in the above-mentioned wavering quality, (echoes, etc.) I actually thought this might be virtual voice, as Siri and Alexa sound less robotic than this, but a human seems to be credited here. Or … are we naming the ‘virtual voice bots’ now? Because could did any living, breathing, hearing humans find this to be acceptable? Audio costs a ton to produce and I fear this author was preyed upon by whoever produced this.


Inconsistencies:
For example, she’s on a diet. But then when she “lost a few pounds”, it’s a negative thing, and it’s because she’s working too hard. What?!?

She works for a family member, yet hesitates to take a job offer from a complete stranger who transparently told her he wanted to date her, for nepotism reasons.

They seemed to have really clumsy, awkward steamy scenes, but then their minds were blown and she was “ruined for all other men”. AND THE TALK WAS SO BAD. “I’m hard again, just by your presence. I’m going to kiss you and love on your sweet body. Is that okay?” I’ll spare you more examples, but … it wasn’t good, at least not delivered robotically. Maybe with an actual voice actor it would’ve hit differently? “Oh wow, he intended to d0 me up against the wall.” Again, maybe just the robotic delivery? If anyone reading this eyeball-read it and has an opinion, please discuss.

There were a few others, but I’m over talking about this—in short, it didn’t really have much continuity. I’d recommend the author try to find strong beta readers. A stronger editor should also catch those dangling modifiers and the poor character development.

Overall:
The book itself: not for me, which on Audible's system = 1 star.
0 stars for the audio.