Franklin Loves Lucy by Mary Matthews

Lucky me!! I received a free downloadable copy of Franklin Loves Lucy by Mary Matthews from Audible.com. Receiving a free copy of this book in no way affects the thoughts expressed in my review as follows below. 

Franklin Loves Lucy is a novella that falls into the historical romance genre and is unabridged. I thought that Franklin Loves Lucy was well read by Lee Ann Howlett. Audio length for Franklin Loves Lucy is approximately one hour and ten minutes, so it makes for a quick read.

The following is a description of Franklin Loves Lucy from Amazon:

Franklin finds me standing at my desk. Standing behind me, he whispers, “Lovely Lucy,” and his hands meet around my waist.
“You’re a thin girl.”
“Some would say I’m in reduced circumstances. I like to think of it as reducing circumstances.”
Lucy Mercer fell on hard times when her family lost their money. She took a job as Eleanor Roosevelt's social secretary. Told from Lucy's perspective, Franklin Loves Lucy is the story of a relationship that began when Franklin Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy and ended when he was President and took his last breath with Lucy by his side.
"Never, ever did I feel more desired than I did during the hot summer days and nights with him. Our glorious existential world. Everyone deserves one great affair in their lives. Franklin was mine."

I found the storyline and characters in Franklin Loves Lucy to be less than captivating. It wasn't that this was a good read, nor a bad one in and of itself... In fact, I thought the premise of the storyline to be a good one. I just felt that the author could have added more dimension/substance to the story. A lot of the same things were said and repeated over and over again like Lucy being able to sense when death would happen is one example I can think of off hand.

I also think it would have been wonderful if Franklin Loves Lucy could have been made into a full length novel with more substance to the main characters and their lives with relationship to other characters in the story as well as their own. Like, what was Lucy's relationship like with Eleanor when she was Eleanor's social secretary?? What did Eleanor really think of Lucy and Franklin's affair??? We read Franklin's take on his relationship with his wife, but what was their relationship like from Eleanor's point of view? 

Lucy eventually marries and has her own family. It would have been interesting to read more details about the relationship Lucy had with her family instead of the few details the author shares with us.

I felt like Franklin Loves Lucy had so much potential to be awesome, but was a little lackluster.

Until my next post, happy reading!