Quick Take
- Narration: Paul Mullin reads his own memoir and the effect is immediate. His Scouse cadence and blunt warmth make this feel less like a recording and more like a conversation in a pub booth.
- Themes: Unlikely career moves, Hollywood meets lower-league football, fatherhood and neurodivergence
- Mood: Warm, candid, and genuinely funny in places
- Verdict: A perfect companion piece to the Disney+ documentary that fills in the personal ground the cameras never reached.
I started listening to this one on a Tuesday evening after a long day, half-expecting something light and promotional. The kind of book that exists mainly to capitalize on a documentary’s momentum. I was wrong within the first ten minutes. Paul Mullin’s voice, warm and direct with a Liverpool accent he makes no effort to soften, pulls you in before you’ve had time to settle. By the time he was describing his decision to drop from League Two to the National League for Wrexham AFC, a move that baffled almost everyone in English football, I had stopped doing anything else and was just listening.
The backdrop matters. In July 2021, Mullin had just been named League Two’s Player of the Season and collected the Golden Boot. He was, by any measure, heading upward. And then he went sideways, joining a club in a lower division that had just been purchased by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. The documentary Welcome to Wrexham made global stars of the club and the owners. What it could not do, and what this audiobook does, is stay with Mullin long enough to understand the man beneath the goal-scoring machine.
Our Take on My Wrexham Story
This memoir works because Mullin is honest about the parts that do not photograph well. His roots in Liverpool, the years of grinding through lower-league football on modest wages, the moments where confidence faltered. None of it is glossed over. One reviewer described the emotional chapter about his son Albi, who is neurodivergent, as the heart of the book, and they are right. It is the kind of chapter that stops you mid-commute. Mullin writes about fatherhood with the same directness he brings to football, and the combination is unexpectedly affecting. He also covers what happens when Hollywood comes knocking, which turns out to be stranger and more complicated than the documentary’s edited version suggests.
Why Listen to My Wrexham Story
The self-narration is the right call here. Readers who have heard Mullin speak in interviews will recognize the voice immediately. Candid, occasionally irreverent, always grounded. As one listener put it, the audiobook captures something that too few autobiographies manage: it reads as if the subject is telling it to you directly. That quality is almost impossible to fake, and professional narrators rarely achieve it with someone else’s material. The production from Penguin Audio is clean and well-paced, and at seven hours and twenty minutes, it never drags. Mullin is honest that he had writing help, and he thanks that writer in the text, but the voice and the structure are clearly his own.
What to Watch For in My Wrexham Story
Listeners who came to Wrexham through the documentary will find genuine depth here that the cameras could not capture. The book covers Mullin’s first days at the club, the dressing room reality of playing in front of Hollywood owners, and the internal mechanics of a promotion push that felt, from the outside, almost scripted. From the inside, it was anything but. The highs and lows of the EFL promotion race are covered with the kind of granular detail that only someone who lived it can provide. One honest note: a reader looking for broader analysis of English football’s pyramid structure or the economics of lower-league clubs will find less than they might want. This is a personal memoir, not a cultural study, and Mullin keeps the focus tight on his own experience.
Who Should Listen to My Wrexham Story
Wrexham fans and documentary viewers are the obvious audience, and they will not be disappointed. But this audiobook also works for anyone who finds lower-league football more interesting than the Premier League. The scrambling, the uncertainty, the tight margins, the question of what a player gives up to follow an instinct. Parents of neurodivergent children will find the chapter on Albi worth the price of the whole recording. Footballers and sports fans who want insight into what a significant life decision looks and feels like from inside a changing room will find this honest and specific in ways that most sports memoirs are not. Skip it if you want tactical football analysis or a comprehensive club history.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to have watched Welcome to Wrexham to enjoy this audiobook?
No, though fans of the documentary will get the most from it. Mullin provides enough context that newcomers can follow his story without having seen the series, and he covers ground the cameras never reached, including his Liverpool roots and his son Albi’s story.
Does Paul Mullin narrate the audiobook himself?
Yes. Mullin reads his own memoir, and multiple listeners note that his Scouse delivery and personal warmth make the listening experience significantly better than a professional narrator would have managed with the same material.
Is the chapter about Mullin’s son Albi a significant part of the audiobook?
It is one of the most memorable sections. Mullin writes with real honesty about raising a neurodivergent child, and several reviewers single it out as the emotional core of the book. It is not a brief aside but a sustained, carefully written chapter.
Does the audiobook cover Wrexham’s promotion to the EFL?
Yes. Mullin traces the journey from his arrival at the club through the promotion campaign that captured the attention of football fans worldwide, with more behind-the-scenes detail than the documentary provided, including the dressing room dynamics and the pressure of the final stretch.
