Fool me once

Ashley Winstead

eAudio - 2022

In this fierce and funny battle of the exes, Ashley Winstead's Fool Me Once explores the chaos of wanting what you already had Lee Stone is a twenty-first-century woman: she kicks butt at her job as a communications director at a women-run electric car company (that's better than Tesla, thank you) and after work she is "Stoner," drinking guys under the table and never letting any of them get too comfortable in her bed... That's because Lee's learned one big lesson: never trust men. Four major heartbreaks set her straight, from her father cheating on her mom all the way to Ben Laderman in grad school-who wasn't actually cheating, but she could have sworn he was, so she reciprocated in kind. Then Ben shows u...p five years later, working as a policy expert for the most liberal governor in Texas history, just as Lee is trying to get a clean energy bill rolling. Things get complicated-and competitive as Lee and Ben are forced to work together. Tension builds just as old sparks reignite, fanning the flames for a romantic dustup the size of Texas.

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Subjects
Published
[United States] : Harlequin Audio 2022.
Language
English
Corporate Author
hoopla digital
Main Author
Ashley Winstead (author)
Corporate Author
hoopla digital (-)
Other Authors
Ann Marie Gideon (narrator)
Edition
Unabridged
Online Access
Instantly available on hoopla.
Cover image
Physical Description
1 online resource (1 audio file (10hr., 42 min.)) : digital
Format
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
ISBN
9781488213137
Access
AVAILABLE FOR USE ONLY BY IOWA CITY AND RESIDENTS OF THE CONTRACTING GOVERNMENTS OF JOHNSON COUNTY, UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, HILLS, AND LONE TREE (IA).
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

By day, Lee Stone is a hardworking communications director for an up-and-coming electric vehicle company. By night, though, she's Stoner, a funny, messy, tequila-drinking partier with plenty of bad dating stories and more than a few men in the rotation. Stoner has a complicated romantic history, with her "Four Major Heartbreaks" marking the turning points in her love life. When Lee pitches a new electric-vehicle bill with the Texas governor's policy director, she's shattered to learn that her new partner was the other half of one of those heartbreaks. Now it's up to Lee to decide if she's going to let Stoner's past ruin her biggest chance at personal and professional happiness. Winstead (In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, 2021) offers a sharp and witty rom-com-styled novel in the vein of HBO's The Flight Attendant and Julie Valerie's Holly Banks Full of Angst (2019). Politically savvy, romantically challenged Stoner is a warmly relatable heroine with a self-destructive streak a mile wide. Exploring the draw of idealism in many forms, Fool Me Once is a gem.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

With this tension-fueled love story set in the world of Texas politics, Winstead (In My Dreams I Hold a Knife) pivots from murder mysteries to rom-coms. Hypercompetent Lee Stone--the hard-partying Stoner to her college friends--is a competitive and driven woman committed to friends, fun, and her career as communications director for an electric car company. But after what she thinks of as her "Four Great Heartbreaks," she's uninterested in romantic commitments. Ben Laderman, number four on Lee's list, has come a long way since Lee broke both his heart and his focus just when he needed to keep his spot at the top of his law school class. Now he's working with the Texas governor on his Green Machine bill--which happens to be Lee's political passion project. With both her bill and the promotion she hopes it will bring suddenly tied to Ben, Lee panics, convinced Ben plans to steal her project as revenge for the way they broke up. But as they're forced to work together, it becomes clear that she's fooling herself if she thinks she's over him. Sparks fly and laughs abound as Winstead rides the line between enemies-to-lovers and second-chance romance tropes. Readers will want to snap this up. Agent: Melissa Edwards, Stonesong. (Apr.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Ann Marie Gideon narrates this second-chance, forced-proximity romance set in the world of Texas politics from Winstead (In My Dreams I Hold a Knife). Communications director for a women-led electric car company, Lee "Stoner" Stone, hopes that a bill focusing on making all government vehicles green will pass the Texas Congress. When she is partnered with a new aide in the governor's office, she is stunned to find it is her grad school boyfriend Ben--the only man she truly loved, despite her sabotaging their relationship. The former couple must set aside their past in order to convince key senators to support their bill while fighting the attraction that never went away. Gideon captures Lee's intense, frequently abrasive, and often self-destructive personality with the forceful tone used for the protagonist. Characters' voices are distinctive, though the Texas-born and -raised Lee is missing even a hint of a Texan twang prominent in many others. Gideon aptly performs the myriad of emotions felt by Lee and Ben as their story plays out. VERDICT Listeners who can get past Lee's drama and party-girl ways will enjoy Gideon's performance.--Amanda L. S. Murphy

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Two exes must suddenly work together to get a green energy bill passed in Texas in this romantic comedy. Lee "Stoner" Stone is a success: She's Director of Communications for Lise Motors, a women-run electric car company, and the brains behind the Green Machine, a bill to replace all Texas state vehicles with electric cars. She's also a bit of a mess, prepared to drink anyone under the table, up for anything, and queen of the walk of shame. After her "Four Major Heartbreaks," she's decided that love is a lie and is here for the good times only. When news comes that the governor has finally hired a policy director, she's ready to turn on the charm only to discover that it's Ben Laderman, her grad school boyfriend and fourth Major Heartbreak. When both bosses decide Stoner and Ben should team up to convince the Senate's last three holdouts to vote "yes," all the time she and Ben spend together might force Stoner to reevaluate her position on love and relationships. Early in the novel, Stoner wonders where the rom-coms about women "with actual character flaws" are, and this is what Winstead has delivered--a love story for every truly hot mess. Stoner's tendency to meet stress and problems with alcohol, drugs, and no-strings-attached sex set her apart from the typical romance heroine but make her ultimate happy ending that much stronger. The characters surrounding her, from a close group of girlfriends to a concerned family and the family-esque mentors at work, are all wonderful friends and foils. Along the way, Ben and Stoner each make real, legitimate mistakes, which makes their eventually coming together feel incredibly earned. The politicking is also almost painfully real. A romance with bite, wit, and heart. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.