Pretend and Propose: A small-town, fake dating romantic comedy

By: Katharine Sadler

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Faking a romantic relationship with my best friend was supposed to be as easy as escaping into a good book, but I didn’t account for falling for him.

Noah’s been my best friend for years. Unlike my boyfriends, he never complains about how much I work or how driven I am to succeed. He’s never suggested I love words more than people.

He’s the first person I want to talk to about everything, good or bad, and I’m not going to ruin our friendship by admitting how gorgeous I find him or how often I think about him.

But when the only way to save both our careers is to pretend to be dating, I put ambition before the potential risk to our friendship.

I’ve always known what I want from life, but I’m suddenly having to ask myself just how much I’m willing to sacrifice to get it.

Cute Story

Virtual Voice was a very poor choice. The emotion of the characters was completely lost as a result of being read by a computer.

good but

the story was enjoyable but the virtual voice lacks something that a human narrator doesn't. The virtual voice was the best I have herd but at no point do I forget that it is a computer doing it

I had to stop when the female

I had to stop when the female computer voice is describing him rubbing one out in the shower. It wasn’t great before then but that was too pathetic.

Awful virtual narration

The use of artificial intelligence to narrate a story is wrong. Not only does it take jobs from real humans, it misses the mark with many instances of incorrect emphasis and intonation.

The story was okay, but the narration ruined it.

AI reader detracts from a quirky and fun story.

The story is cute, but there are some random comical parts of the storyline that are lost due to the AI reader. The reader sounds real-ish but the pauses and inflections are awkward enough that it detracts from the story and oddly makes it very one-note. There are moments where it takes a beat to realize the author was being quippy or emotional, as the reader didn’t account for personality and character differentiation in the narration. I hate when a fun, easy to listen to story isn’t done justice by the reader. 😞