A summer deal with unexpected terms

Dolly Brick has always figured things out on her own. At thirty-nine, she's a kindergarten teacher, a part-time Uber driver, and the person her family calls when things go wrong. So when an electrical fire threatens the Brick family home in Whitfield, Rhode Island, she doesn't think twice about spending the summer there with her teenage son Gus to help her father and her brother Christopher keep everything from falling apart.

What she doesn't expect is Stewart Whitfield, standing next to a flat tire outside his family's historic mansion with a tabloid scandal unraveling around him. When he offers Dolly a deal, fake girlfriend for the summer in exchange for a new roof, it sounds simple enough. Public dinners, a few benefits events, nothing real. Except that Dolly has never spent that much time with someone who actually sees her, and that changes the terms of everything.

Annabel Monaghan, the New York Times bestselling author of Nora Goes Off Script, set this story in a fictional Rhode Island coastal town where old money and working-class roots sit side by side. The audiobook, narrated by Julia Whelan, is a GMA Book Club pick for summer 2026.

Audiobook review ★★★★★

Fake dating done right, and then some

I'll admit I picked this one up partly because of the GMA Book Club stamp, and partly because Julia Whelan narrating a summer romance felt like a guarantee. What I got was a book that takes a well-worn premise and fills it with enough specific, human detail that it never feels recycled.

Dolly Brick is one of those characters you root for from the first scene, not because she's in some dramatic situation, but because you recognize her immediately. She juggles four jobs, raises her son Gus without complaint, and shows up for a family that doesn't always show up for her in the same way. The dynamic with her brother Christopher, who has schizophrenia, is handled with real care. Monaghan doesn't use it for plot convenience; it's woven into who Dolly is and how she moves through the world.

Stewart could have been a stock figure, the handsome heir with nothing behind the facade. He's not. The way the two of them talk to each other, the gradual dropping of performance on both sides, is what makes the romance work. There's a scene on a boat, after a high-society event, where neither of them is pretending anymore, and the shift is quiet enough that you catch it before Dolly does. That's the kind of writing that earns the emotional payoff at the end.

The setting matters too. Whitfield, Rhode Island, is fictional, but Monaghan builds it with enough texture that the geography of the town, the fish house, the Whitfield estate, the harbor, becomes part of the story rather than just backdrop.

Julia Whelan's narration is exactly right for this material. She plays Dolly as someone who is competent and tired and funny all at once, and she never oversells the emotional beats. The pacing she brings to the dialogue scenes makes the banter land without tipping into performance. At 9 hours and 10 minutes, the audiobook goes fast. That's not nothing.

Fake dating Summer romance Julia Whelan narration GMA Book Club 2026 Single mom heroine

Download the free audiobook: Dolly All the Time

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Audiobook cover: Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan

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Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan is a summer romance built around a fake-dating arrangement between Dolly Brick, a hard-working single mother from working-class roots, and Stewart Whitfield, heir to the old-money family whose name the fictional Rhode Island town bears. The deal starts as a transaction. It does not stay that way. Narrated by Julia Whelan, the audiobook runs 9 hours and 10 minutes and was a GMA Book Club pick for summer 2026.

Take advantage of the free trial, cancellable at any time, and let Julia Whelan guide you through Whitfield, Rhode Island, at exactly the right pace. Her performance carries Dolly's warmth and dry humor from the first scene, and it holds all the way through.

The audiobook is yours to keep even after the trial ends. The free trial also unlocks access to thousands of other titles, with no obligation to continue. Start listening now.