Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan, narrated by Hillary Huber. I was worried about a bait-and-switch there for a while but everything turned out okay in the end!
Nora Goes Off Script is fairly simple in its premise. A woman who writes a screenplay and the production uses part of her house for some of the filming. The lead actor asks to stay on for reasons and offers to pay an exorbitant rate per day for the privilege. She could use the money so says yes and while he’s staying in her “tea house”, they fall in love. (The road to true love never runs smooth of course, so there’s a bit more to it than that.)
Nora usually writes scripts for The Romance Channel and she uses a fairly similar formula so there’s something a bit meta about it all – something which the author and Nora lean into over the course of the book. I didn’t take it as a dunk on romance; the formula works for a reason. But with all that foreshadowing about how romances usually work, it stands to reason that there’d be a plot twist here.
In fact, for quite a while I wondered how it was going to work out. For a reasonable amount of time in the latter half/third of the book I didn’t think much of Leo Vance and did not see how a HEA could happen that I could accept – at least, not with him. But then I’d look at how much I had left of the listen and started to stress about whether there’d be time for a believable romance for Nora with someone else. I wondered if this was a “women’s fiction” book mislabelled as a romance; I wondered if it was a romance at all (yes, I went to some dark places!). I wondered if there’d be a bait and switch and a new love interest would turn up in the last chapter. I wondered whether I’d need to throw my iPod across the room.
I’m here to tell you that the book is not mislabelled. The romance is ultimately very satisfying and I did not see what I’ll call the plot twist coming. (I’m calling it that because I don’t want to give spoilers away not because that’s necessarily the best term for it.) I ended up enjoying the book more because I didn’t know how it was going to end so I don’t want to ruin it for others.
Nora Hamilton is a divorced mother of two. She’s been pretty much the sole parent even before her husband, Ben, left her. He was a jerk who wanted everyone to do everything for him and who thought the world revolved around him. To process her feelings, she writes a script, based on the breakdown of her marriage. It’s most definitely not a romance and her agent shops it to a major studio which snaps it up. Big Hollywood actors are cast and they want to use the tea house on her rural property to film some pivotal scenes. Leo Vance plays the “Ben” character – although in the movie The Tea House, his name is Trevor. Leo is clearly struggling with something while he’s there filming but seems to find a measure of peace in the sunrise. In the words of Nora’s 8-year-old daughter, Bernadette, the sun “comes up here”. Of course it comes up everywhere every day but there is something special about Laurel Ridge, New York, and their house in particular. Leo clearly sees it so he makes Nora an offer she can’t refuse; he will pay her a thousand dollars a day to stay for a week.
Arthur, Nora’s 10-year-old son, has been cast as Fagin in the school musical Oliver! and as Leo begins to learn the rhythms of Laurel Ridge and Nora’s regular routine, he finds himself helping Arthur run lines and then agreeing to stay until opening night three weeks away.
Nora, Arthur and Bernadette all fall in love with Leo. He’s gorgeous and funny and he’s self-deprecating in a way that’s unexpected for a such a big star. I did have a little trouble believing he didn’t really know how to go grocery shopping (surely there was a time before fame for him?) but it was amusing anyway.
It’s hard to imagine Leo actually staying in Laurel Ridge though. Nora has a very strict routine, built to keep her life running in all the ways and its equally hard to imagine Nora changing her life to be with Leo.
There’s far more about Nora than anyone else in the story which is to be expected given that it’s told in her first person (present tense) perspective.
When things inevitably fall apart (because of course) there’s a large portion of the book and quite a bit of time (months and months of time) where it’s just Nora and the kids. The longer this section went on the more worried I got. And this was also where I didn’t like Leo much. I had reasons.
The narration by Hillary Huber is very good. She gives Nora a cynical, somewhat jaded edge which was in keeping with the text but turned up a few notches. The cadence of the performance is a little different; sometimes it felt more like Ms. Huber was reading a list but this worked as well. Nora is kind of like that.
I liked Ms. Huber’s male character voices (although they mostly sounded the same, with Martin, the director of The Tea House, being the notable exception) and her kid voices were solid as well.
There were some moments I laughed out loud, mostly because of Nora’s dry wit and, rendered in Ms. Huber’s tone, I think it worked even better for me than it would have on the page.
Ordinarily in a romance I prefer to spend more time with the love interests together and, as a hero-centric listener, I prefer a lot more of the hero. Here, it was sometimes difficult for me to tell who that actually was or even if there was one. But the structure of the story required it and in the end it paid off for me.
Grade: B
