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