This Wild Heart

A Fake Marriage, Sports Romance (Wilder Family)

By: Karla Sorensen

Narrated by: Hannah Chiclana, Wesley Mercer

Who forgets marrying a football player? Me, apparently. Turns out countless shots and a bad breakup lead to questionable decision making. But waking up in Vegas with a ring on my finger beside a hot, naked man is hard to ignore. I married Parker Wilder. Thanks to our quickie nuptials, I’ll get my inheritance, and he’ll get his family and their well-intentioned meddling off his back.

Forgetting the wedding was the easy part. Being married to him is a whole different story. Parker is too … everything. Chiseled by the gods good-looking. A heartbreaking kind of broody. The kind of man you know will wreck you for all others. Good thing this is all pretend. And oh, how we pretend. We pretend ourselves right into me ripping the clothes off his body.

It’s all fun and fake marriage until the day he gets a knock on the door with the surprise of a lifetime. Until the bomb goes off and we’re left to pick up the pieces. Until the pretending stops and we’re left with only one question: was any of it real?

©2025 Karla Sorensen (P)2025 Karla Sorensen

Excellent!

This was such a good book! It was a feel good story and had some very touching moments that had me in tears. The duet narration was amazing and the female narrator was truly fantastic. One of the best I’ve heard.

Love this book

Love the story and the characters. Such a tearjerker and heartwarming story. Not too long and the story flows beautifully.

Parker & Anya - GREAT story, decent narration

Narrators are fine - not my favorites, but it's still good.

Parker has gotten really good at hiding his guilt, and his grief. Anya is hiding just her grief, I think.

They meet once at Parker's cousin Emmett's wedding, but Anya is engaged. When he runs into her again in Vegas, she's no longer wearing that ring.

When Anya found out her former fiancé was cheating, she lost more than the relationship - she also lost early access to her trust fund. So after a LOT of sad shots at the bar, she wakes up and discovers she's married to Parker Wilder.

Regardless of whether you think you've read enough "got drunk & got married in Vegas" books - this one will still hit you deep in your heart. Anya thinks a lot about the emotions she's hiding, but nothing is as heart wrenching as reading how Parker feels about the last couple of years of his dad's life, and how he CHOSE not to be there because he was mad (this should not be a spoiler if you've read ANY of the prior books in this series).

And the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae is the package left on Parker's front porch one morning right after he and Anya are figuring out how they're going to fake it in front of his family.

Obviously there's a ton of attraction between these two - but they also have a lot in common just in the way they like to hide their feelings. But she sees what he's hiding, and the more she sees, the better he feels about admitting these feelings.

Oh, how I cried in the last part of the last epilogue - it was so poignantly written and really tied a neat little bow on how Parker finally came full circle with his feelings about losing his father.

Sweet Scale: 5/5
Spicy Scale: 3.5/5

Perfection.

Absolute perfection. I’ve read and loved every one of the Wilder’s stories, and every one of the Ward sister’s too - but this one is the very best of them all. And the narration - best one I’ve ever listened to. The emotion poured into the performances had me captivated from the start, and the duet format made it even better. I’m really going to miss this family but am so grateful that I picked up that first book.

Cute but that male narrator

Somewhat spoiler: The story was cute. Predictable. I thought I was going to hate the baby troupe but it was different than I expected.
The female narrator was really good. But that male. Good lord. His dialogue wasn’t bad but the narration. It was like listening to someone read monotoned stereo instructions. I almost DNFed but I pushed through.