Musings on Romance

Tag: Julia Whelan

Thank You For Listening by Julia Whelan, narrated by Julia Whelan

Thank You For Listening by Julia Whelan, narrated by Julia Whelan. A delight for my ears.

Illustrated cover in pink, showing a book in yellow with the book's title and some blue over-ear headphones with the author's name on the top headband part, there's a cup of fruit tea? in the top right as well

 

Julia Whelan has long been one of my very favourite narrators. I love the way she presents characters, her emotion, her style, and, at base, I just like her voice. It’s very pleasing to my ear. She’s a talented actress who brings those skills to her performances as well and that combination is just killer. Any romance narrated by Julia Whelan will get my attention and so, as soon as I established that Thank You For Listening does in fact have a HEA, I was all grabby hands.

Sewanee (pronounced “Swanny”) Chester is an actress who lost her career when she also lost an eye in an accident seven years before the book begins. She turned to audiobook narration, at first in romance, under the pseudonym, Sarah Westholme. But Swan, as she most commonly goes by, doesn’t believe in love and happy ever afters and got out of romance and into general fiction, using her real name.

While at a book convention in Las Vegas, she meets “the rake” (the chapters have titles) and they have one hot night together. She uses the alias, Alice, on the basis of “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” and only knows Nick by his first name. His Irish charm is winning though and Swan keeps thinking about him when she returns to LA.

Swan’s beloved grandmother has dementia and is an assisted living facility. She will soon need more care and that is going to cost a lot of money she doesn’t have, so when a fantastic offer is made to revive Sarah Westholme one more time for a duet narration with the fan favourite, Brock McKnight, Swan says yes.

Brock is famously secretive about his true identity (think someone like Sebastian York – although Brock is emphatically NOT York – more on this later) but his voice has apparently melted panties all over the USA and probably parts of the rest of the world too. For myself, I don’t think of narrators quite that way. I do appreciate a sexy voice (I mean, who doesn’t?) but I don’t then sexualise the narrator. Apparently there are a lot of (mainly) women who do. There’s a whole world over on Facebook I’m only peripherally involved in. Brock is uncomfortable with the way he’s been sexualised by his fandom and doesn’t really love audiobooks or romance but he’s good at it and it’s a living. Brock has his reasons for the way he feels which I won’t go into here because spoilers but I admit I had mixed feelings about both narrators in the novel not liking romance. To be honest, I couldn’t help but wonder…

Which brings me to that “more on that later” I mentioned earlier. Right at the end of the audio is an author’s note chapter titled “on Autobiography” where Ms. Whelan talks about how the book came to be and specifically says that Swan is not her (even though they do share some commonalities, which she details) and that Brock is not based on any narrator from real life. Brock is a work of fiction and so is Swan. I was relieved to hear that Ms. Whelan loves her job. I’m really glad she included that chapter because as she mentions at the beginning of it, the nature of her actual job and the characters in the book mean there will inevitably be questions about just how fictional the story is.

Some of the book is nonetheless fairly meta – discussion about not outing a narrator’s pseudonym for example (don’t do that) and about some of the more rabid areas of the romance fandom are true, and the nuts and bolts of audiobook narrating are rooted in reality. Because of that mix of real and fictional, it was, I think, especially important for her to be clear and I’m glad she was.

Back to the book. As Sarah and Brock begin to record their duet narration for what is a serial to be released weekly in eight parts, they start to trade texts and emails and build a connection outside of work. It’s flirty and fun and sexy. They grow closer and eventually they decide to meet. In person. In real life. This is a BIG deal. Both are nervous.

For the listener there are many questions. Brock’s voice is not Irish so he can’t be Nick, so who is the HEA going to be with? Will there be a love triangle? Is Brock good-looking or does he just have a sexy voice? What will Swan think of him when they actually meet? Where’s Nick? Is he coming back or was Nick kind of a breaking of a seal which enabled Swan to open herself to Brock? Where, exactly was this promised HEA coming from? So many questions!

There are also family issues with Swan’s father and grandmother, unresolved issues related to Swan’s accident and her grief about it, the possibility of acting again with her best friend and fellow actor, Adaku. I have to mention that I fell a little in love with Swan’s mother’s new partner, Stu. He was so funny and sweet. I laughed hard at the text messages he sent.

Thank You For Listening is a hybrid of women’s fiction and contemporary romance but there is definitely a romance and a very satisfying one too. In some ways, it is two books, smushed together; there are particular sections which are very romance-y and others which are not. As for heat, there’s not a lot of on-page sex but what there is brings some steam. I didn’t feel robbed.

The narration, of course, is stellar. I very quickly cared about the characters and Julia Whelan’s vocal performance only added to my enjoyment. Because Ms. Whelan also wrote the book, she knew the characters inside out and that had to be an advantage when she was performing them.

Audio narration is acting and the best narrators do more than just read us a story. There’s a bit of discussion in the novel about AI maybe eventually being a significant player in audiobook narration and I cannot tell you how vehemently I rejected the idea. But, as the novel points out, there is an entire generation of listeners who may not know the difference. How sad that would be for them.

Grade: A

Book Lovers by Emily Henry, narrated by Julia Whelan

Book Lovers by Emily Henry, narrated by Julia Whelan. Loved it.

illustrated cover of a blonde white woman in a red dress in a red rowboat, reading a book and a dark-haired white main in a red top in a purple rowboat on the water with a pink, red and purple sunset in the background

 

It’s no secret that Julia Whelan is one of my favourite narrators. If she narrated more romance titles I’d be a very happy camper. In fact, the main reason I picked up last year’s Emily Henry release, People We Meet on Vacation was because Julia Whelan was narrating. This year’s offering, Book Lovers was on my radar because I enjoyed People We Meet On Vacation so much. (I’m saving Beach Read for when I need a pick-me-up.)

While People We Meet on Vacation and Book Lovers are very different books, they have the same vibe to them and the same glorious witty banter so I’m confident those who enjoyed last year’s book will enjoy this year’s too. And the narration is stellar so there’s also that.

Nora Stephens is a literary agent in New York. Her father walked out on her mother when she was still pregnant with Nora’s younger sister, Libby and it was just the three of them for a long time. When Nora was 20 and Libby was 16, their mother died suddenly and Nora was Libby’s guardian. Nora is fierce generally but when it comes to Libby she will do anything to make her sister happy and ensure her safety and well-being, including putting her own dreams on hold or passing on them completely.

Nora’s star client is a temperamental, high maintenance woman by the name of Dusty Fielding. When the story begins, Nora has just been dumped by her boyfriend who has decided to move to a small town where he’s met someone else (this is a thing that keeps happening to Nora) and she’s late for a lunch with editor Charlie Lastra. She’s trying to interest Wharton House books in Dusty’s latest novel but the pair do not get off to a good start.

Fast forward two years and the book Charlie passed on is a runaway bestseller and about to be a movie. Nora and Charlie have had nothing to do with one another since then but they bump into each other (repeatedly) when Nora and Libby go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for a month-long holiday. Sunshine Falls is where Dusty’s famous book is set and Libby is a mega-fan. In the past few months, Nora and Libby’s connection has stuttered and something is clearly wrong. Libby is five months pregnant with her third child and Nora is worried there might be trouble in paradise and/or something wrong with Libby’s health. Libby wants to get away before the baby is born and have a rest away from her two young daughters (aged four and two respectively) and begs Nora to go with her for the summer. Nora, desperate to reconnect with Libby and fix whatever is wrong, agrees.

As it happens, Charlie was born in Sunshine Falls and he’s there helping out his family after his dad became ill.

Dusty has written a new book and Nora is horrified to find that she, Nora that is, seems to be the inspiration for the main character – an acting agent with a reputation of being a shark who lacks emotion and heart. Stung, Nora decides to let loose a little and agrees to participate in Libby’s “list” of small town things to do when she is in Sunshine Falls. It’s a ridiculous list which includes things like “pet a horse” or “go skinny dipping” and “save a small business” but Nora will do anything to make Libby happy. The other problem is that the new book is fantastic – Dusty’s best yet. And for reasons, Charlie takes over the editing so Nora and Charlie begin working together on it over the summer.

Charlie has his own troubles with his family and not quite fitting into the Sunshine Falls aesthetic.

Whatever is going on with Libby causes Nora no end of angst as she schemes to identify the problem and fix it, just like she’s always done.

There are nods to common small town romance tropes which I heard as fond, including a very handsome horse farmer Libby encourages Nora to date.

But it is always Charlie Nora keeps going back to. They’re like magnets, always attracted to one another no matter what. After an unexpected kiss, Charlie tells Nora that it “can’t happen” between them and they skirt around each other for a little while but are inevitably drawn back together.

They have a delightful connection. They aren’t really enemies in my view but I suppose some might classify this as an enemies to lovers story. They aren’t ever truly mean to one another but they do a lot of sarcastic sniping – it never crossed the line for me. There was always an underlying attraction and chemistry which was obvious and a genuine care that shone through. Charlie agrees Nora is a bit of a shark but he loves that about her. He doesn’t want to change a thing. Nora, for her part, comes to realise that Charlie keeps things very close to his chest but once she gains a little insight she reads him like a book and realises there’s much more to him than she first thought. They have the best banter – flirty, funny, witty and smart and I was completely there for it.

The narration only highlighted all the good things in the text. I’m sure I enjoyed it more on audio than I would have in print simply because Julia Whelan’s narration is just that good. (On her Instagram feed there’s a sample of her doing Charlie’s voice and it is fire.) Charlie’s tones were husky and rich; like honey with just a touch of gravel in my ear (apologies for the mixed metaphor). The humour throughout the book is enhanced by Ms. Whelan’s excellent comedic timing and the emotion that breaks and reforms Nora was embedded in the performance too. There’s one particular scene where Nora’s voice has a hitch in it when she’s talking about something difficult and it was perfectly portrayed.

I always like lots of the love interests together in a romance and I got that in Book Lovers – Charlie and Nora spend a lot of time together and there’s plenty of evidence of just how much they belong together and how good for each other they could be if only they can find their way to a HEA.

There was a little too much bait-and-switch in the Libby subplot which I don’t think worked quite as well as the rest of the book but the romance was fantastic and the narration excellent. Definitely recommend.

Grade: A

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