Title: Covet
Author: Tracey Garvis-Graves
Narrated by Kathleen McInerney, Scott Aiello
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
Release Date: 9/17/2013

A copy of this audiobook was provided to me by Audiobook Jukebox for an honest review.

COVET is the story of a woman trying to hang onto the life she has and a man who wishes he could have that life — and her — for his own. Claire Canton’s husband Chris was out of work for over a year, and for a man who defined himself by the ability to provide for his family, the results to him and their marriage were devastating. It was only when Claire insisted he get treatment for his depression and he finally found a new job that things started to turn around, however slowly. But when the new job takes Chris away from home for days on end, the loneliness threatens to overwhelm Claire completely.

Officer Daniel Rush once had a version of the life Claire is fighting to keep, complete with a woman who looked very much like her. When he pulls Claire over for a burned out taillight, it begins a chain of events leading to a dangerous friendship, one that could sever the last threads binding Claire to her husband and family forever.

When I read COVET earlier this year, it affected me so strongly that I started crying at about the halfway point and continued crying all the way to the end. The story is so perfectly described and beautifully written that I felt everything Claire was experiencing as though it was my own life. I wanted her to find the happiness she’d thought she’d once had, but I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for Chris and I was rooting for Daniel the whole way, as shocking as that may sound.

But the great thing about this audiobook presentation is that there are both male and female narrators, and Scott Aiello’s voicing of both Chris and Daniel’s points of view provided the extra nuance I needed to understand both men much better than I had before. I appreciated how he was able to clearly delineate between the two men so that I never had a problem knowing who was speaking, even when the chapters went directly from one to another in the story. As Claire, Kathleen McInerney provides the majority of the narration for COVET and does a wonderful job of conveying just how lonely and sad Claire has been in her marriage and how her relationship with Daniel was both the best and worst thing that could have happened to her. Ms. McInerney is also skilled at voicing the various female friends in Claire’s life, as well as the children, which can often sound forced with a less talented narrator.

The talents of both narrators in COVET not only made the story even more enjoyable for me, they gave me new insight to all three of the main characters and made the best book I’ve read this year even better. I can’t recommend it highly enough.