Title: Lustily Ever After: The Audiobook Musical
Author: Stephanie Bentley (Creator/Composer), Miranda Ray (Story Writer)
Publisher: Independent
ISBN: 9781089023753
Genre: Romance
Pages: 2 hours 37 minutes audiobook / 104 pages
Reviewed by: Allison Walker

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When we meet her, Raleigh Jackson is on her way to make her career. She has an interview with sexy schmillionaire Trystan Lay as his “fake girlfriend.” When she lands the job, no one is more surprised than Raleigh, with her girl-next-door looks and very ordinary life. What follows is a hot and heavy tale of romance, and of hilarious and playful parody.

If you love romance as much as the creators of Lustily Ever After, you’ll hear all sorts of hidden references to popular movies, books and TV shows in this audiobook gem. Every character is perfectly to stereotype. Raleigh is every Manic Pixie Dream Girl; a beautiful young woman who doesn’t know she’s beautiful, cursed with an adorably harmless fault, and undeniably available to whatever handsome but troubled man happens to wander by. In Raleigh’s case, her tumbling red locks are plagued by a hopeless clumsiness, and you lose count of how many times she trips in the first couple chapters. Trystan is as handsome as he is rich. He employs body guards to keep him from hurting people when his deadly Navy SEAL training kicks in. NASA considers him the most-ideal representation of the human body and employs him to test space technology. He’s also a Pulitzer Prize winning botanist. When Raleigh tells Trystan she volunteers for an exotic petting zoo for disadvantaged animals, Trystan replies he founded the petting zoo after he rescued so many exotic animals he did not have space in his home to keep them all.

Lustily Ever After continues with this witty self-repertoire, constantly making fun of itself by employing only the most cliché manifestations of its genre. The audiobook is genuinely funny, so as a reader, be prepared to laugh out loud and for strangers to smile and stare awkwardly at you. Between the risqué word play and cheesy one-liners, you won’t be able to restrain yourself.

As an audiobook, a musical and a romantic comedy, Lustily Ever After has a lot of moving pieces. Yet, the many contributors worked together to produce a finished product which is seamless and hilarious. The soundtrack is upbeat and fun, and plays off classic 90’s hits. It feeds into the mood of the novel, a quirky costar. If producers ever find a way to bring this audiobook to stage, and it is even half so funny as in its current format, I will pitch a tent and stand in line overnight to buy a ticket.

To be completely fair, Lustily Ever After is more than just a romantic parody. Raleigh has a strong and healthy relationship with her best friend Kim, one which definitely passes the Bechdel Test. Kim is the voice of reason shouting through the storm of an outlandish romance whirlwind. She is genuinely concerned about her best friend, and by the end of the story the two girls have fallen apart and reconciled again, and become better friends because of it. Despite Kim’s self-admittedly “nondescript” character, and the audiobook’s self-depreciating habit of pointing out the flatness of supporting characters, the relationship between Kim and Raleigh is refreshingly original. Lustily Ever After comes together as a musical masterpiece of romance and romantic parody. If the stage production ever comes to be, don’t change anything. I listened to this audiobook in one delicious go.