In the Dark

The Rules, Book 2

By: Monica Murphy

Narrated by: Seraphine Valentine, Jack DuPont

Stuck spending the summer with his screwed-up family, Gabriel Walker is bored out of his mind and looking for an adventure. And he seems to find it with the hot girl who lives next door. The attraction between them is instant and electric. Soon they're spending every stolen minute together. Talk about the perfect summer fling.

Lucy isn't what she seems, however. She doesn't live next door; she's the girl who's been hired to house-sit for the summer while the family goes on a worldwide vacation. But if Gabe wants to believe she's a spoiled rich girl looking for some fun, she can go along with that. After the summer, she'll never see him again.

They never count on running into each other at college. But when they do, Lucy must keep up the pretense of being a rich girl, and it's exhausting. She knows she's falling in love with Gabe, and she's scared he feels the same. Will he still care about her when he discovers the truth?

©2015 Monica Murphy (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Trite Story, Bland Narration

What was most disappointing about Monica Murphy’s story?

Is there actually a story in this book? I wasn't able to get past the first couple of chapters in the book... the story is so incredibly trite- poor girl, rich boy, he acts like an idiot, but the chemistry is so incendiary that they just can't stay apart, blah, blah, blah. Don't get me wrong, many romance novels incorporate similar storylines, but this one fails to add anything on to the bare bones cliche it presents. To top it off the language was stale, something that could have been written in high school.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrators contributed to the slowness of the book along with the cliche. They tried a bit too hard to emphasize the poor latina girl angle and the rich white boy, like way too hard.

VERY SLOW

Would you try another book from Monica Murphy and/or Seraphine Valentine and Jack DuPont ?

I liked the first book in this series. This one not so much

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

It just dragged too much

Was In the Dark worth the listening time?

NO

Doesn’t measure up to the 1st book

Really boring and way too long. Had minimal improvement half way through, but went downhill and got boring again.

The male narrator’s female voices makes me cringe. His male voice is good, but his female voice are like nails on a chalkboard. The female narrator does well with her part.

Not sure why, but I forced myself to listen so I wouldn’t miss the character development of the series. I just didn’t enjoy the book. I sped up the book to 2.5 and kept skipping forward to get it over with.