Good with His Hands by Lucy Felthouse is an erotic short story about a rambler whose country walk throws her into the path of a rugged park ranger.

Lucy Felthouse's saucy short stories are often delightfully British in essence, and her female characters feel much more genuine than the many similar tales of perfectly sculpted and spray-tanned women which tend to dominate the genre. It was refreshing to have the protagonists use protection, considering they were strangers hours before they began warming each other up in the isolated shepherd's hut. So many stories dispense with realism in favour of indulging airbrushed fantasies, but Felthouse's erotic stories always feel as though they are written about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations.

I felt that the story could have done with tightening up a little, as some of the descriptions felt rather like filler. (For example, listing the contents of her lunchbox item by item the moment she removed the lid instead of either cutting it or integrating the progression of her meal into the story.)

The narrator, Fleur Balavage, has a nice voice but seems slightly disengaged at points. She appears to struggle with some of the longer sentences and runs words together a little, either not enunciating clearly enough or doing so with a marked deliberation, almost like someone trying to conceal a regional accent.

I think, perhaps, that the narrator may not have a great deal of experience, or lacks familiarity with the genre and was thrown by the prospect of reading an erotic story. She did settle into her performance, but it was not the most natural reading at the start. I think Balavage has the potential to be quite good if she is given the opportunity to develop her skills and her confidence.

Speeding the playback up the tiniest bit to 1.10x improved the pace of the narration and helped it feel much less plodding at the points which had begun to do so. Once set to that speed her performance was enjoyable despite the initial awkwardness, and I would listen to her narrating books in the future.

In a surprising contrast to the previous story I listened to by Lucy Lofthouse, On Her High Horse , the first fifteen minutes of this hour-long audiobook are spent following Layla on her walk, and nothing raunchy happens for the first three-quarters of the story. I would therefore recommend it to people who prefer romantic stories more than to someone who hopes for steamy scenes throughout. It could be a good introduction to erotic fiction for anyone looking to dip into the genre for the first time, as there's an intimacy to listening to sex-scenes which differs greatly to reading them, and this audiobook builds up to it gently.

*I received this audiobook free of charge in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.