Fool Me Once

Ann Marie Gideon narrates this second-chance, forced-proximity romance set in the world of Texas politics from Winstead (In My Dreams I Hold a Knife). Communications director for a women-led electric car company, Lee “Stoner” Stone, hopes that a bill focusing on making all government vehicles green will pass the Texas Congress. When she is partnered with a new aide in the governor’s office, she is stunned to find it is her grad school boyfriend Ben—the only man she truly loved, despite her sabotaging their relationship. The former couple must set aside their past in order to convince key senators to support their bill while fighting the attraction that never went away. Gideon captures Lee’s intense, frequently abrasive, and often self-destructive personality with the forceful tone used for the protagonist. Characters’ voices are distinctive, though the Texas-born and -raised Lee is missing even a hint of a Texan twang prominent in many others. Gideon aptly performs the myriad of emotions felt by Lee and Ben as their story plays out.