When Grumpy Met Sunshine

A Novel

By: Charlotte Stein

Narrated by: Emily Spowage

A steamy, opposites-attract romance with undeniable chemistry between a grumpy retired footballer and his fabulous and very sunshine-y ghostwriter.

When grumpy ex-footballer Alfie Harding gets badgered into selling his memoirs, he knows he’s never going to be able to write them. He hates revealing a single thing about himself, is allergic to most emotions, and can’t imagine doing a good job of putting pen to paper.

And so in walks curvy, cheery, cute as heck ghostwriter Mabel Willicker, who knows just how to sunshine and sass her way into getting every little detail out of Alfie. They banter and bicker their way to writing his life story, both of them sure they’ll never be anything other than at odds.

But after their business arrangement is mistaken for a budding romance, the pair have to pretend to be an item for a public who’s ravenous for more of this Cinderella story. Or at least, it feels like it’s pretend—until each slow burn step in their fake relationship sparks a heat neither can control. Now they just have to decide: is this sizzling chemistry just for show? Or something so real it might just give them their fairytale ending?

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

©2024 Charlotte Stein (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“The queen of delicious pining returns! This book is a hilarious and modern Cinderella story that feels like eating warm chocolate cake. I loved the secretly sweet but grouchy hero, the fabulous yet relatable heroine, and the proper northern perspective. Charlotte Stein is a must-buy author.”—New York Times bestselling author Talia Hibbert

"Charlotte Stein is sui generis as an author in all the most delightful ways. Her romances are funny as hell, absurdly hot, full of sincere emotion, and overflowing with endless imagination—but best of all, her authorial voice is entirely unique. Her books are her, down to their bones, and there’s no mistaking her writing for anyone else’s. When Grumpy Met Sunshine is the perfect example of how she can take a simple, fun premise—surly footballer meets sunny ghost writer tackling his memoirs—and make it entirely her own, mining it for all its absurdity, humor, knee-melting heat, and heartache. In short: If you want to know why Stein’s work helped inspire me to begin writing, look no further than this book. I can’t wait for legions of new readers to discover her stories.”—Olivia Dade, author of Spoiler Alert

“This book had me grinning like a fool from the first chapter. I’ve read a lot of grumps but Alfie—who lists among his hobbies—not being spoken to—takes the cake as THE ULTIMATE grump—the most charming, most likely to have a gooey inner center, most gone for the glorious sunshine heroine from the jump. I hope romance readers are ready, because I don’t think anyone has ever delivered on a slow burn quite like this.”—Rosie Danan, bestselling author of The Roommate

Beautiful Story

I love the author's description of the characters and how she makes them desirable.

welcome back!

I don't normally leave reviews, but Charlotte is such a good writer with an amazing voice. It is feel-good fantasy and brilliantly described heat.

Such a great book!!!

The author captured the best parts of falling for someone that will give you butterflies in the best ways. I loved this book! The narration was really hard to decipher at times because the narrator does not do any accents or inflections or even pauses to help listeners discern who is talking, but the book is too good to be stopped by that. Get the paper copy but READ THIS BOOK

Love love love

I love this book! It was funny, sweet, and everything I wanted to read in a book. I love Alfie and Mabel! The Author did a fantastic job with the banter the give and take. I loved the descriptions of the characters. I was absolutely smittened with the ending.

Will definitely be a book I will reread when I want to just smile and feel good!!!!

LOVED! A perfect RomCom

This book is the perfect balance of hilarious, sexy and sweet. I absolutely loved it!

Yes, even me!

I love a book that's funny honest and written in truth. This book made me fell hopeful to all things possible. it was well written and I thoroughly enjoyed it 😀.
Thank you.

cute

A cute summer romcom.
Might be better to read unsure but listening , all the online socials commentary was unpleasant to follow.
I fast forwarded a lot.
But the overall story was adorable.

Cute Feels Throughout

Mabel and Alfie are the sweetest! I ate this up and loved these two awkward flirts.
Maybe it's that I relate to Mabel's internal thoughts and blindness to how others could see her differently than she saw herself! *gasp*! lol or maybe I just happened to be in the right mindset to absorb this cutesy romcom. I loved it and let it take me along for the ride! Their fake relationship was fun and so obviously not fake. I loved how Mabel could pull info out of Alfie and his willingness to share the truth with her once he trusted she wasn't lying to him. Their complexities were completely relatable to me and while miscommunication occurs, it's not in the typical style... they get in their own way and don't believe the truth which causes their miscommunication.
Regardless, this was satisfying and the sexual tension was *chefs kiss* beautifully teasing.

I easily could have seen this with a couple more chapters getting further with the memoir and more spice... Maybe I just wanted more from them because I loved them! Anyway, I do wish we got more of the memoir story-writing and a longer ending with cute moments. I was irritated with how we got to the ending but fine with the end result...

4/5 for performance: The end of chapter texts/notes/emails threw me off at first and were hard to track who was saying what. Sometimes I couldn't quite tell who was speaking because the narrator had the slightest inflection change between Alfie and Mabel. Otherwise, beautiful and funny!

Steamy, endearing story, awesome narrator.

This is my first charlotte stein and I wonder how the rest of her books could even top it! This was an amazing read, with a very particular brand of smut I thoroughly enjoyed.

adorkable

the ML type is my favorite... loved the story line it was so cute and 😏