Audiobook narration ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Storyline ⭐⭐⭐

CW: sexual harassment, physical assault, alzheimer's, parental abandonment, mention of miscarriage, depression

rounding up to four stars for the absolutely stellar narration by Phillipa Soo, The Stand-In is a fade to black contemporary romance that skews close to the women's fiction / chick-lit line.

Gracie Lee is fired from her job after being caught calling-off work for a mental health day and for refusing her nasty boss's sexual innuendos and harassments. The same photo of Gracie in the coffee shot on her sick day also lands in the tabloids...as the press seems to think she is Chinese movie star Wei Fangli.

So much so that the burned out Wei Fangli reaches out to Gracie, offering to pay her to be her double at various events and seen out on the town while the actress performs in a stage play in Canada. Gracie reluctantly agrees, needing both money and a way to continue support her mother's care in an assisted living facility.

Sam Yao, Wei Fangli's co-star, best friend, and maybe more? also will be accompanying Gracie as she pretends to be Fangli, and Gracie certainly cannot believe the sparks she's beginning to feel are real, can she?

All in all - there was a LOT of plot. So much plot. Philippa Soo is such a great narrator, she really carried me through here. I was feeling solidly four stars until the twist I saw coming actually happened, and it really took away from the HFN with Sam.

All in all, a solid choice, I will try more from the author.

Spoiler - the twist -

Spoiler

turns out Gracie and Fangli are half-sisters. Grace's mom left China and her first daugther, Fangli, behind when she became pregnant with a second child and wanted to keep it. She immigrated secretly to Canada, but had a miscarriage. Grace was her mother's third child, with a white Canadian man her mother met sometime later.