Ex Appeal by Cathy Yardley, narrated by Jenapher Zheng and David Lee Huynh. Not as successful for me as the previous book in the series and the narration was just okay.
Last year I read book two in Cathy Yardley’s Ponto Beach Reunion series – Gouda Friends – and loved it so I was keen to try book three (I have yet to backtrack to the first book but I’ve heard good things). I decided to try Ex Appeal on audio because why not, right?
The “Nerd Herd” is a group of friends from Ponto Beach California who went to school together and have remained close. Vinh and Tam Doan are twins. Tam’s HEA came with Josh in Gouda Friends. In that book I learned that Vinh had dated Emily MacDonald throughout high school and into college but they had split up very acrimoniously. Vinh had stayed in New York after college and worked in a high powered finance job. Emily returned to Ponto Beach and they had not seen each other since the break up apart from at their 10 year high school reunion. It did not go well.
Emily is an amateur hacker. She came from money but when her father died shortly before she and Vinh broke up, she returned home to find that the family were deeply in debt. Emily has taken on the role of family caretaker. This includes being responsible for the drain that is the money pit of the family home. Emily’s mother is flighty and not terribly competent. She’s never had to be; first her husband looked after her, now it is Emily. Emily’s dream of becoming a professional “white hat” hacker went by the wayside because there was no money to pay for the necessary qualification. Instead she picked up a series of low-paying call centre helpdesk jobs.
While Emily struggled career-wise, Vinh’s star continued to rise. He’s making a lot of money and toeing right up to the ethical line to keep his client’s finances how they like them. He’s been made a vice-president of the company he works for and things are looking good for him. If he’s lonely and isolated, well that’s just his life.
Things take a turn when the book begins, about a year after the 10 year reunion which (I believe) started off the series. One of Vinh’s big accounts is missing $10 million. Only Vinh has access to the account. Suddenly instead of being successful, he’s suspended and accused of stealing. He heads home to Ponto Beach for “Friendsgiving” to lick his wounds and make a plan. In order to prove his innocence and get some payback (hopefully) against whoever hacked his account, Vinh asks Emily for help. He knows, despite everything, that he can trust her.
At first, Emily is not just “no” but “hell, no” but she quickly sees that Vinh is in a world of trouble. She’s soft-hearted. As much as Vinh broke her a decade earlier by splitting up with her and putting his career before their relationship, she cannot stand to see him lose his career and potentially more, when she can help. She’s not above a bit of payback herself while she’s at it though. So she makes a deal with him; she’ll help him discover who hacked his account and stole the money and he has to do whatever she says. And, when it’s all over, he leaves and makes sure they never see one another again.
Vinh and Emily have never stopped loving one another. Vinh had his reasons for breaking up with Emily. Some of them were even good. I liked that neither one of them were perfect and that there was a great deal of nuance about their relationship then, what went wrong and why Vinh did what he did. But Vinh made mistakes nonetheless – neither he nor Emily were completely right or completely wrong.
As Vinh and Emily work together to clear his name, their forced proximity works its magic and they find their old chemistry is even stronger than it was.
Both have grown over the intervening decade and Emily is more open to seeing herself as part of the problem rather than the victim. Vinh is finally willing to tell Emily what really happened.
Still, Vinh is significantly career-driven and is quite single-minded about it. The core conflict harks back to their original breakup – will Vinh finally choose Emily over his career?
The subplot involving Vinh’s work and the trouble he’s in was resolved by a bit of deus ex machina which felt a little bait-and-switchy. On the one hand, it is probably realistic that Emily could not have done everything on her own with the equipment and time constraints she had. On the other, the introduction of a new character whose role it was to solve the problem and nothing else felt way too convenient.
The relationship stuff was more compelling to me and more successful. I was glad that Emily and Vinh met each other halfway and had honest discussions about what they both wanted and what would make them happy.
The narration was okay. There was nothing particularly stellar about it. It was serviceable but not great. Of the pair, I preferred David Lee Huynh’s performance to that of Jenapher Zheng. Ms. Zheng had an uneven pace which did not always work for me. There were times when the flow of the sentence was interrupted which, while not actually changing the meaning of the text, made it a little harder to understand. It was the story rather than the narration which kept me listening. Even so, I did find myself taking some breaks along the way. The audiobook was one I found it easy to put aside. Largely that was due to the narration but there was some contribution from the story as well; it was too long.
I can’t say the narration was bad. But it was just okay for me. It did not particularly add to the story but it did not significantly detract from it either. We have said before at AudioGals that when it comes to audio, it’s all about the narrator/s. What makes me want to listen to a book as opposed to reading it, is all about that narrative performance. For me, I think I’ll be reading the other books in the series rather than listening.
Grade: C
