Musings on Romance

Tag: contemporary (Page 8 of 119)

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center,  narrated by Patty Murin

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center,  narrated by Patty Murin. A new favourite author/narrator pairing.

illustrated cover, cartoon style with a pretty white woman in a pink party dress and pink roller skates raising a paintbrus in the air on the right and a handsome white guy in kind of nerdy/conservative clothing with a little white dog on the left. They appear to be on a rooftop in a city at night.

Last year, The Bodyguard was in my best of list – not only did I enjoy the story but I adored the narration by Patti Murin – so it was a no-brainer for me to review this year’s release Hello Stranger.

Sadie Montgomery is a portrait artist, broke and desperate to get her big break. She barely squeaks by with the earnings from her Etsy shop. She lives in her studio which she’s not supposed to do as her landlord, Mr Kim, (her BFF’s father) assures her it’s not “fit for human habitation”. She refers to it as her “hovel”.

Her father is a very successful cardio-thoracic surgeon who is disappointed with Sadie’s career choice. When Sadie’s artist mother died when she was 14, he remarried very quickly thereafter. Sadie does not get along well with her stepmother, Lucinda, and positively detests her stepsister, Parker, – who is a very nasty piece of work indeed.

But things are finally looking up! Sadie is a finalist in a national portrait competition – one of 10, out of a pool of 2000 entrants. In six weeks, she has to deliver an original portrait and she has the chance to win $10,000 and finally get some success.

On the way home from buying party supplies to celebrate her making the cut, she has a seizure and is rushed to hospital. There, she is diagnosed with a venous malformation in her brain which needs to be fixed or it could be fatal. It is the same thing that killed her mother. Following surgery, Sadie is left with a condition known as “acquired prosopagnosia” – acquired face blindness. She not only cannot recognise faces (something those who are born with prosopagnosia cannot reliably do to one degree or another), but the faces themselves are a jumble of pieces, like a mixed up jigsaw puzzle or a Picasso painting. For a portrait artist, this is a disaster. The condition may or may not spontaneously resolve. It’s a lot for her to cope with.

Sadie is comforted by her beloved dog, Peanut, who is a “gentleman of certain years” and her sudden crush on Dr. Oliver Addison, the new vet at the clinic where Peanut was boarded when she was in hospital. She can’t see his face of course but she just knows he’s a looker. He’s also very kind and loves animals. Check and check.

Meanwhile, her neighbour, Joe, moves from “weasel” category into the friend zone. She thought he was a womanising creeper but as she gets to know him she realises that’s not what he is at all.

Sadie is a person who does not like to ask for help. She is always and ever “okay”. Great, even. Joe is the guy who is always willing to help. He helps anyone – even Parker, when she moves into the building largely to mess with Sadie, because she really is awful.

Over the weeks leading up to the portrait competition, Sadie has to find a way to paint a face that doesn’t look like a police sketch or a ghoul and, she has to ask for help. Both of these things are incredibly hard for her, especially because she refuses to tell most people about her face blindness. She thinks of it as a failing or a weakness and is embarrassed by it.

It’s not difficult to guess the gimmick of the story so I don’t necessarily give myself points for picking how things ended. What makes it so fun is the characters and the way the story is told.

Sadie is wonderful. She’s funny and interesting. Her flaws are realistic and understandable. She has had to learn to rely on herself since her mother died and her father essentially abandoned her (emotionally at the least) and now it is a point of pride to keep doing it. She wants to honour her mother and find some further connection to her with her painting. Just before she died, Sadie’s mother was also a finalist in this same portrait competition.

And Joe is the best. I never believed he was a creep – I figured who he was talking about in the elevator that time. He’s kind, generous, smart and good-looking. Mr Kim calls Joe “helpful” because that’s what he is. But he’s no doormat either.

The only thing I’d say is that I think the “gimmick” went on just a little too long. I began to get impatient for the big reveal. For me, it tipped over from tension to the wrong side of frustrating. But this was only very close to the end and it’s a small thing in the bigger picture (heh, see what I did there?).

Patti Murin is fantastic. I just love listening to her. She has wonderful comedic timing and perfect intonation. Katherine Center writes with humour but its often about the delivery in audio and the jokes land every time here. But it’s more than just jokes. It’s the amusing asides, the whip smart turns of phrase. Ms Center writes them and Ms Murin delivers. It’s a perfect author/narrator pairing.

Ms Murin has a great range of character voices, excellent pacing and wonderful emotion in her performance. I enjoyed listening to her so much I immediately went to Audible to find more of her work.

Grade: A

Fly Bye by CW Farnsworth, narrated by Courtney Patterson & Neill Thorne

Fly Bye by CW Farnsworth, narrated by Courtney Patterson & Neill Thorne. The narration was stronger than the story.

Blue sky containing a fighter jet sky writing a love heart.

(received review copy from Podium Audio.)

Everly (Evie) Collins has just finished medical school in Boston. She’s returned home to Charleston to do her residency. She’s super smart so was able to graduate early. When she was five years old, Grayson Phillips and his parents moved into the house next door. Gray and Evie’s brother, Noah, became best friends. Evie never got over her crush. Fly Bye is their journey to a HEA.

Gray is a pilot in the Air Force and even though he is not based in Charleston, nonetheless has an apartment he shares with another friend. I don’t know why. There are quite a few things Gray does or says which didn’t make sense to me or strike me as plausible. For instance, one of Gray’s favourite things is “surfing a flat sea” (I believe that’s called “paddling”). I don’t think a fighter pilot is allowed to bring his girlfriend onto base and take her up for a joy ride in a jet. I don’t think fighter pilots on deployment get come home for 24 hours as “co-pilot” for a fellow pilot who has a family emergency. (It wasn’t stated explicitly but it was strongly implied that they flew a fighter jet 5000 miles for this.) So, yeah, there were things which were all for plot and not because they made actual sense.

Anywho, Gray is in town and Evie and he decide to have a fling. She’s a virgin because of course she is. He balks at first but then changes his mind and they bang a lot for about a month but from the beginning, Gray makes it clear he’s not a long term option. However, Gray’s words and actions don’t always line up and Evie becomes, understandably, confused. After Gray is deployed he calls her and tells her she is on his list of people to contact if something happens to him. That’s not what you’d expect from a fling.

Evie graduated early but she’s not Doogie Howser. Much of the time she came across to me as emotionally immature and this didn’t really gel with the rest of her character and the mettle it takes to succeed in medical school.

There was a little too much of nothing happening – a whole bit about Evie having lunch at work one day for example where nothing happened except she didn’t enjoy the anchovies repeating on her afterwards and bought an iced tea afterwards – that made my eyes glaze over.

I struggled with this listen. I was tempted to DNF it at times. However, I did listen until the end and there were some entertaining and engaging things in the book. Gray and Evie did have good chemistry and the section when they were in Beaufort (I’m guessing at the spelling here but it was pronounced Byew-fort in the book if that helps) was my favourite. Gray could be a real jerk at times but he could also be sweet and he did give good grovel.

The narration, by Courtney Patterson (except for the epilogue which was read by Neill Thorne), was very good even though at times I thought the material she had to work with was not. Her character voices were well differentiated and she had good tone, pacing and emotion. I’d happily listen to her again.

Neill Thorne’s narration was so brief it was difficult to really have an opinion on it. Good, I guess? The grade here is for Ms. Patterson though as she did the bulk of the book.

Fly Bye didn’t turn out to be my cup of tea but it has a 4.17 rating on Goodreads to I seem to be in the minority.

 

Grade: C

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