Virtual Strangers by Sam Canning

Narrated by Lesley Harcourt






Two things enhanced my experience with this book. One was the fact that I was actually in Edinburgh (where the book was based) when I started and finished listening to it. The second was the narrator. There was a light, fun tone which she maintained throughout the book that had me wanting to see the inevitable happen. I say inevitable because it is not difficult to see where things were headed or what the twists in the tale were. Despite knowing almost exactly what would happen, Ada learns her lessons well as she faces every new setback. She moves back into her mother’s house when she has to unceremoniously quit her PR job. She has a best friend waiting in the wings to take care of her. She takes some things for granted while stressing about others. By the time the story comes to a close, some of the things switch places. Ada is trying to get her company off the ground. She has only a single client, and because she feels beholden to holding down that one person, she takes a lot of crap on his behalf. In the evenings, she indulges in her Agatha Christie fandom, which leads her into an old-fashioned pen pal love story. That part does not feel real enough, and so when pushed, she starts to show interest in other places. There is enough discussion about the effort that goes into getting a business like Ada’s going that it feels like part of the story and not tacked on to provide a background for the events to occur. Ada is not perfect. She herself quite freely admits it. But that is not used as an excuse to keep making mistakes. Ada doesn’t make the same mistake twice, which makes the entire book quite fun to listen to. Normally I do not get long durations to listen at length to one particular book, but the humour, the narrative voice and the general book had me finishing it on a short holiday to Scotland( The combination was completely unplanned!) I would recommend the audio version to fans of this genre who like to go outside the standard US/London setting. I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own listening experience.