It’s a Date (Again) by Jeneva Rose, narrated by January LaVoy. Entertaining story, excellent narration.

It’s a Date (Again) begins after Peyton Sanders has left an encounter with an unnamed man who had confessed his love for her. She told him she did not love him back but as she’s walking down the street, she’s devastated and crying. She meets an unhoused man, who offers her some advice and as a result, she realises that the only reason she’s so upset is that she does in fact love this man – she’s just terrified of things going wrong. Fresh with the realisation that she made a mistake and desperate to correct it, she’s running back toward her man when she’s hit by a car. She wakes up four days later in the hospital, with almost no memories. One of her BFFs, Mya, with whom she was on the phone at the time of the accident, knows she was in love with someone but Peyton had not yet shared his name.

When three men turn up to the hospital shortly after Peyton wakes, each claiming to be her boyfriend, Mya proposes that Peyton date each again to determine which one is her true love. (Peyton had been non-exclusively dating, each man knew this so there’s no cheating.) Is it Tyler, the construction worker, Sean, the business consultant, or Nash, the chef?

Peyton’s other BFF, Robbie, thinks she should wait until she’s better before putting this pressure on herself but he comes around to the notion after Peyton becomes aware of their “marriage pact” made when they were both 19 and in college. If neither were in a serious relationship by the time she turned 32 (which is in just two weeks), they would get together.

Experienced romance readers know exactly where this one is going of course.

A couple of few things:

Is the US health system so bad that someone waking up from the coma is discharged the same day with only a check of vital signs?
Peyton doesn’t have any broken bones and apart from some scratches on her hands and her memory loss, has no other injuries to speak of. There’s not much by way of even a headache. After she gets out of hospital there’s mention of the scratches on her hands and taking some medication but otherwise, she’s A-ok. I guess she was just lucky??
Why a marriage pact which matures on Peyton’s 32nd birthday? That seemed pretty random. (It was never explained in the book.)
The story takes place almost entirely over two weeks. I kept tripping over the fact that Peyton was in a coma only days before (in one instance the day before) and she was already going out and dating. It seemed too unbelievable.

I know “romance reasons” exist but these things did make me roll my eyes a bit.

Still, if one can overlook those pesky details, the story was otherwise fun. It’s the sort of book one can easily envisage as a movie actually. The episodic nature of it suits cinema. It has the heat level of a mainstream PG13 movie too. (That’s fine – it didn’t need more and I didn’t feel anything was lacking.)

One of the three guys turned out to be a real jerk (of course) but there was a bit of a mismatch with the way he was presented at first. It seemed like he’d suddenly had a personality transplant. I put it down to the author not wanting readers to feel sorry for him when he was not “the one”.

I knew who Peyton loved from the beginning but I nevertheless enjoyed the journey to her (second) realisation of it. I also enjoyed the friendship between Debbie (Peyton’s landlord and kind-of fairy godmother), Mya and Robbie. Mya is a stand-up comedian and there were more than a few laughs in the story as a result.

Listeners may wish to know that the story references prior death of both of Peyton’s parents in a car accident.

The narration was one of the main draws for me as I’d not read this author before. But January LaVoy is a fantastic narrator and I knew she would keep my ears entertained if nothing else. She has a great range of character voices and excellent acting skills which shine through in her performance. There’s a reason she’s one of my favourite narrators. I especially like her male character voices – though I sometimes wonder how she gets them so deep and/or rough/husky without hurting her voice.

With so many potential “heroes” Ms LaVoy had an opportunity to display multiple lead voices to (maybe) keep listeners guessing. Any one of them would have worked.

It’s A Date (Again) was entertaining and enjoyable, so long as you don’t think too much about some of the plot details – and paired with narration the calibre of January LaVoy’s, I count it a win.

Grade: B