Not My Kind of Hero by Pippa Grant, narrated by Savannah Peachwood & Connor Crais. Entertaining contemporary about a newly-divorced single mother who moves to a Wyoming hobby farm to find herself and start again and the hot grumpy tenant renting the gatehouse at the end of her driveway.
Not My Kind of Hero features a newly-divorced single mother who moves to the Wyoming hobby farm she inherited from her great uncle, to find herself and start again and the hot grumpy tenant renting the gatehouse at the end of her driveway.
Maisey Spencer used to be the on-screen comedic sidekick to her (now-ex) husband Dean’s home improvement show. But behind the scenes she used to do most of the work. Dean is clearly a jerk. Maisey tried to make her marriage work at the expense of being the parent she wanted to be to her daughter, Juniper (aka Juni). Now divorced, Maisey is determined to do right by Juni and put her first. Dean is disinterested in being a dad and is caught up in his new home improvement show with his new love interest.
Maisey inherited Wit’s End, a hobby farm in Hell’s Bells, Wyoming, from her great-uncle Tony. He had been the black sheep of the family but Maisey had spent some valuable time on the ranch as a teen and kept in touch (albeit sporadically) with Tony over the years. Regardless of the time they spent together, they did love each other. Also, Uncle Tony knew Dean was a jerk and expected Maisey would need a place to stay at some point in her life so he left her the farm. Which was prescient for Tony and lucky for Maisey.
Juni, aged 16 and a junior in high school, is not at all thrilled to be moving away from her friends and her familiar life. However, her old life wasn’t that great either to be fair; Juni’s friends all turned on her when Maisey’s mother was jailed for fraud (oh yeah, there’s that too). Still, Maisey has her work cut out for her to reconnect with Juni.
Flint Jackson is a high school teacher and handyman-type who is the go-to guy in Hell’s Bells when something needs doing. He rents the gatehouse at Wit’s End and has been looking after things and reporting to Maisey by email on necessary repairs, etc., in the year since Tony died. He was extremely close to Tony and judges her harshly for not attending Tony’s funeral and not visiting Tony when he was alive. Maisey apparently brings out the curmudgeon in Flint.
Flint is one of Juni’s teachers and her soccer coach. Because of a bad experience (he did nothing wrong or unethical) at a previous school, Flint has a firm “no dating the parent of a student” policy. As Flint quickly realises there is far more to Maisey than he believed from watching her old home improvement show and from his preconceptions about her, his attraction to her grows. But Juni is his student. Also, Juni hates him.
Maisey is working hard to build a life for herself in Hell’s Bells and find a place to belong. She particularly does not want to do anything which will unsettle Juni even more than she already is and she is determined to put Juni first – something she believes she failed to do for the previous six years or so as she tried to do and be what Dean wanted. As attracted as she is to Flint (once the initial tension over his preconceptions about her is dispelled), she won’t pursue a relationship and risk Juni feeling second best.
There are many quirky small town characters – Opal the local hairdresser and sage, Corey the owner of “Almosta Ranch” next door to Wit’s End and Earl, the local bear.
Tony had a reputation for taking in strays. Flint had been one of them and Maisey kind of is too. Maisey’s dream is to build a place for women who have to start again just like her and so she’s following in Tony’s footsteps.
The narration by Savannah Peachwood and Connor Crais is good, with both narrators differentiating characters well and clearly enjoying the quirky humour of the story.
There were a couple of intimate scenes where Maisey found her bliss very loudly and vocally. I’m not sure whether to feel sorry for Mr Crais for having to perform those sex noises or not but I did find them a bit cringe. I don’t have the book so I can’t read the scene to see whether it was the text or the narration, however. Regardless, they were a bit too much for this listener. Possibly luckily for Ms Peachwood, she didn’t have any of those scenes in her sections of the book.
Otherwise, the narration was smooth from both narrators, with good pacing and intonation.Not My Kind of Hero was an entertaining listen with solid narration from both performers.
Grade: B
