Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE: Confetti Hearts

SERIES:  Confetti Hitched, Book 1

AUTHOR: Lily Morton

NARRATOR:  Joel Leslie

PUBLISHER: Self-published

LENGTH: 8 hours and 56 minutes

RELEASE DATE: October 3, 2023

BLURB: 

Joe Bagshaw doesn’t believe in love or marriage anymore, which is rather a hindrance for a wedding planner.

His own marriage was a whirlwind affair that ended before the ink could dry on the wedding certificate. Nevertheless, even with his divorce pending, he’s getting by. Or at least he was until he finds himself snowed in at a remote Scottish hotel with the wedding party from hell, a terrible ABBA tribute band, and his soon-to-be ex-husband.

Lachlan has missed Joe from the second his husband walked away. He wants Joe back and is prepared to do anything to get him. Being snowed in together seems to offer the chance Lachlan needs, but does he have what it takes to get Joe to trust in love and their marriage again?

From best-selling author Lily Morton comes a romantic comedy about love, matrimony, and the best of second chances.

This is the first book in the Confetti Hitched series.

REVIEW: 

Lily Morton’s writing is consistently excellent, and Confetti Hearts showcases one of her many writing strengths: her characters.  It’s the men she creates that make her stories indelible. 

Joe and Lachlan are a terrific couple – vivid, relatable, flawed yet endearing. She invests in them, breathing life into their characters, giving them vibrancy and complexity.  They have great chemistry and intriguing backstories that dovetail – this is a second-chance romance after all.  

We definitely get to know Joe better and faster than Lachlan, though. Generally speaking, Morton is not an author that feels bound to the alternating POV chapters construct. In all of her books, she switches POV only when she deems it the right time for us to hear the other side of the story.  However, in her recent books, she’s become more lopsided in the division of chapters, giving substantially more time to one character than the other.  

I do not advocate for an equal split between POVs, and definitely not for the need to alternate them.  In fact, the latter can be disruptive to a story’s flow.  Morton steers clear of those traps and I appreciate the fluidity that it brings to her stories.  However, Confetti Hearts contains a disconcerting imbalance between Joe and Lachlan’s POVs.  The first time we get Lachlan’s POV is in Chapter 4, and we get only two chapters (plus parts of a handful of others) from his POV total in the entire book. That lack of insight made it harder for me to understand his character.

The storyline here is simpler than most of Morton’s other stories, but still impactful. Joe and Lachlan lock eyes, indulge in lust, and impetuously marry, but the falling in love part takes them both by surprise. Unfortunately, their timetables for that don’t align, causing misunderstandings, consternation, and near undoing of their short-lived marriage. Lachlan struggles more, and if I had to call out something that could have been improved, it would be that aspect of the story. Lachlan’s actions towards Joe and their relationship at the beginning of the story weren’t backed up with the needed context to drive his desire for a second chance. I expected we’d get it later or from his POV – and we do get both, but not enough. Again, I think more time spent in Lachlan’s head could have remedied that.

Another cure for that presents itself in the form of one Joel Leslie.  Leslie’s completely invested, spot-on performance of the Confetti Hearts audiobook helps fill in the blanks of the whats and whys of Lachlan’s character.  Even without Lachlan’s POV, I heard him through Leslie’s second-hand portrayal i.e., Lachlan through Joe’s eyes.  Lachlan made so much more sense to me when made real through Leslie’s voice.

I’ve used many words to describe Morton and Leslie’s audiobook collaborations – perfect, extraordinary, magical, and so on.  All of those descriptors apply here as well.  Indeed, Leslie is the perfect match to Morton’s snarky, incisive, emotionally rich love stories.  As the only narrator Morton uses, it’s impossible to read her books without hearing Leslie’s voice in your head when reading.  His full-bodied, vibrant, authentic, expertly accented portrayals of Joe and Lachlan infuse Confetti Hearts with all of the laughter and love (and a bit of angst too) that Morton intended.  

I highly recommend the Confetti Hearts audiobook.  Morton pens a funny, at times swoony, and always alluring romance and leaves it in Leslie’s more than capable hands to deliver as live audio theater.  I adored every minute of listening. 

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Audible 

Amazon