The Score (Off-Campus, Book 3), by Elle Kennedy | Free Audiobook

What Kennedy does well here is resist the temptation to soften Dean before he's earned it. For a long stretch of the book, he remains exactly who he appears to be, a man who has never had to try hard for anything. Allie doesn't change that. Grief does. The death of his best friend Bo hits Dean in a way that nothing in his life has prepared him for, and his response, the drinking, the drugs, forgetting Allie's opening night, is ugly and specific and real. Kennedy doesn't paper over it. That section of the book is genuinely hard to listen to, in the best way.

The backstory with his old coach, the man whose daughter Dean once dated in high school, adds texture without taking over. It gives Dean a history that exists before Allie, which is important. And the subplot with Dakota, the ten-year-old girl he ends up coaching, is the kind of detail that signals a writer who trusts her story. It doesn't need to be there. That's precisely why it works.

Allie holds her own throughout. Her arc, the theatre career, the complicated relationship with her father, her refusal to wait for Dean to pull himself together, gives the romance a spine. She is not a reward for his growth. She's a person with her own things to lose.

On the narration: Savannah Peachwood and Andrew Eiden have been the voices of this series from the start, and by book three the chemistry between them is settled and easy. Peachwood brings warmth and sharpness to Allie without pushing too hard in either direction. Eiden's Dean is exactly right, smooth where the character performs, and genuinely cracked open in the scenes that call for it. At 11 hours and 41 minutes, the dual narration gives the story a rhythm that a single reader couldn't replicate.