Planning for Love

By: Christi Barth

Narrated by: Gayle Hendrix

Hopeless romantic Ivy Rhodes and anti-Cupid Bennett Westcott request the pleasure of your company fortheir disaster of a courtship.

Wedding planner Ivy Rhodes is the best in the business, and she's not about to let a personal problem stop her from getting ahead. So when she’s asked to star in the reality TV show Planning for Love, it doesn't matter that the show's videographer happens to be a recent - and heartbreaking - one-night stand.

Bennett Westcott admits he didn't handle his encounter with Ivy very well. But looking at her beautiful smile - and great body - through a camera lens every day? He can't be faulted for suggesting they have some no-strings fun.

The more time they spend together, the more Ben realizes Ivy isn't the wedding-crazed bridezilla he'd imagined. But if he doesn't trust himself to make a relationship last, how can he convince Ivy to give him another chance?

©2012 Christi Barth (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Mediocre/cliched story with wrong-fit narrator

The premise of this story sounded fun, one-night stand turns into a potentially uncomfortable business situation.
I honestly don't know if the story would have turned me off if I read it in my own "voice," but with the narrator's voice I was constantly being either drawn out of the story or totally turned off by the emotions the narrator's voice evoked.
I will start with the narrator. Ms. Hendrix has an older voice. I have no idea of her age, but she sounds much too old for the characters she played in this book. She sounded alternately whiny, cranky, and just plain tired. The light, flirty repartee was neither light nor flirty. It just sounded wrong.
Her female voices were aged; the male voices were just downright irritating.
The voices were inconsistent. Her English accent seemed to go from English to Scottish to Irish and back. Her portrayal of the voice of a gay man was also inconsistent and sometimes offensive.

To the story: cliched and over the top, with irritatingly perfect heroine and stereotypical commitment-phobe male. I stopped listening at about the half-way mark as our love-is-forever heroine has just decided on the perfect plan to "prove" to the commitment phobe that she is his one and only forever love. Again, trite, cliched, annoying and all the more ridiculous with the thready, creaky voice of the narrator.

I did laugh at some of the dialogue. The wedding industry setting provided some interesting set-ups and background. But the combination of the spotty writing, by turns imaginative and ho-hum, and the wrong choice for the narrator just made it a chore to plow through it.

A Fun Story Ruined by a Terrible Narrator

This was a very good, fun, story. I continued to listen despite the narrator because the story hooked me.
Gayle Hendrix can not do male voices. They all sound robotic and stiff. Her female voices are somewhat better. This is the second book I have listened to by her and she is not that good and makes for a painful listening experience.

This is the story of Ivy and Bennett. Bennett is a Reality TV show producer, who catches Ivy unaware at a wedding that she is the planner of, (well actually the bride sets it up and forgets to tell the wedding planner.) as she trips and falls literally at his feet. The name of the series is Wild Weddings Smackdown, lol and things get interesting from there on. Needless to say before long Ivy finds herself being followed around with camera rolling while she does her wedding planning thing, but the problem is the heat that is generated between Ivy and Ben. After a one night stand, and he takes off after saying some harsh words to her because of her idealistic views about love and romance, he is back several weeks later with camera in tow to film her and the fireworks begin. This listen was an easy, entertaining listen, with several bumps in the road to romance. It was enjoyable. Totally a chick lit....and I loved every minute of it.......except for the Narrator, she isn't good at all.

Poor narrator

What disappointed you about Planning for Love?

I can't even finish the story - the narrator is grating on my ears.

Has Planning for Love turned you off from other books in this genre?

No

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Gayle Hendrix?

Yes yes yes!

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I am not going to try to listen any further.