I’m over at Dear Author with a review of Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday. Lots to enjoy (understatement) but didn’t quite stick the landing.
Tag: single dad (Page 1 of 2)
I’m over at Dear Author with a review of Always Remember by Mary Balogh. Enjoyable but not one I’m likely to revisit.
The True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren, narrated by Cindy Kay and Jonathan Cole. I loved it. One for the best of list.
I’ve had some great success with Christina Lauren books in the past – whether reading or listening to them and something about the blurb for The True Love Experiment called to me. A TV producer (single dad!! Yes!) and a romance author pair up to create a reality TV dating show, a la The Bachelorette. I’m not even a huge fan of reality TV, let alone dating shows. Still, I was super keen to try this one.
Connor Prince III is an English guy who has been living in the US for some years – he still has his yummy accent though. (Another yes!) He is divorced and has a remarkably great relationship with his ex-wife, Natalia– who is more like a best friend than anything else – and together they share custody of their 10-year-old daughter, Stevie.
Felicity “Fizzy” Chen is a popular romance author who is in both a dating and writing slump. She’s bubbly, energetic, generous and fun. She has never really thought that there would be a soulmate or “the one” for her but she likes romance and sex and is pretty disappointed that she’s had a significant dry spell.
Connor is a producer at a TV production company which had been specialising in environmental documentaries. Only, the boss, Blaine, has decided they need to get into reality TV to make a lot of money and Connor has been tasked with making a reality dating show. He’s not enthused but there is not a lot of work for producers in San Diego. If he leaves for LA where there is more work, he will be too far away from Stevie and that’s not what he wants at all. He’s a hands-on dad who sees his daughter every weekend (although there is a large amount of flexibility between him and Nat, as required, when one or the other has something on). His own father was absent and Connor will not be that guy. Plus, he loves Stevie to bits. He’s been promised money for his next nature documentary if he comes through on the dating show so he’s going to suck it up.
A chance encounter at a bar when he sees Fizzy across the room inspires him and before you know it, Fizzy is the lead in the dating show and, at her suggestion, he’s casting hero archetypes as her potential love interests.
Prior to the show commencing filming, Fizzy challenges Connor to undertake joyful (non-sexual) activities together and over this time each begins to feel more and more the pull of attraction.
Once filming starts, things only get worse – while the “heroes” are all well and good, none of them are Connor. What to do?
It was a delight.
Special shout out to River Pena, the hero from The Soulmate Equation (which I now definitely have to read) who is one of Fizzy’s BFFs. Her other BFF is his wife, Jess. Fizzy is not at all shy – about sex or anything else. She is delightfully blunt. Poor River tends to walk in on Fizzy and Jess in the middle of an explicit conversation – “It was the size of my fist!” – and immediately, without a word, turns around and leaves. It made me laugh out loud in glee.
The romance between Connor and Fizzy is wonderful. Sexy and charming and sweet and just great. I enjoyed the characters separately but together they were something even better.
I loved the narration. If I had one tiny criticism it would be that very occasionally – and I mean very occasionally, I thought the way a certain line was delivered didn’t quite fit the text but that is a tiny criticism as compared to my overall enjoyment.
Cindy Kay does a great English accent for Connor – this actually feels pretty rare to me. Commonly, a British narrator will do a good US accent but the reverse isn’t as often true. Her deeper tone for Connor worked great for me too. Fizzy is well named – she has this chaotic energy about her and Ms. Kay imbued her voice with just that quality without making her annoying or over the top.
I just went and checked my audio file because I could not for the life of me remember if Jonathan Cole used a US accent for Fizzy’s voice. And do you know, he does not. And I DID NOT NOTICE when I was listening. I did not care. How weird is that?? Ordinarily I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to accents. Perhaps it was merely that I found Mr. Cole’s accent overall delightful to listen to – he definitely had a touch of the Richard Armitage’s about him – that I was in a daze the entire time. Whatever is the case, I ought to probably have liked the listen less on the basis of Mr. Cole being unable to or choosing not to use an American accent for the American Fizzy. I ought to have but I didn’t.
Both narrators delivered on character. Mr. Cole was as able to express Fizzy’s energy as Ms. Kay. And Ms. Kay was as good at embodying (emvoicing?) Connor as Mr. Cole was.
I raced through this listen. Just about everything about it worked for me.
In hindsight, I would have liked to have had a little bit more information about how Blaine reacted to the denouement and what consequences, if any, it had (and if none, why) but when I was listening I didn’t really feel any lack.
The True Love Experiment is definitely going to make my best of list for this year, no doubt.
Grade: A
To Hold and Protect by Sandra Owens, narrated by Patrick Zeller. Not enough of the dog!
To Hold and Protect is the third book in the K-9 Defenders series set in the fictional town of Marsville, North Carolina and which tracks the romances and HEAs of the Church brothers. Parker Church is, somewhat surprisingly, all things considered, both a highly successful artist (known as “Park C”) and the full time Fire Chief in Marsville. He’s also the single dad of a nearly-6-year-old daughter, Everly. (When does the man sleep??)
I first met Parker and Everly in the first book, In His Protection (about the oldest brother, Tristan and his HEA with Skyler) which I also reviewed here at AudioGals.
Children’s book author, Willow Landry, has inherited the house next door to Parker from an uncle with whom she had no meaningful relationship. After a breakup with a man she was living with and, as it turned out, didn’t love all that much, she decided to move to the house, renovate and sell it and with the proceeds, move to the beach* (*exact beach to be decided).
Parker tends to fall in love easily and quickly and every time it gets him into trouble. The last time, he had a disastrous relationship but he ended up with Everly so he’s calling that good. He dearly loves his daughter. All the Church brothers do. But since becoming a parent, Parker has been very careful to provide a consistent and safe home life for Everly. So, when he first encounters Willow, he’s dismayed to find himself both disturbed by and deeply attracted to her. Initially, he plans to ignore the attraction but proximity and a daughter whose fondest wish is to have a mother soon show that to be an impossible ask.
For her part, Willow couldn’t help but notice Parker is the most handsome man she’s ever met and she quickly falls in love with Everly. She’s a little slower to fall for Parker – but only a little. However, Willow is not planning on staying in Marsville. Parker doesn’t want Everly to get attached to Willow if she’s just going to leave. How can they have a HEA? (Don’t worry – they work it out in the end of course!)
Meanwhile, there’s an arsonist at work in Marsville. The arsonist is leaving messages for Parker which indicate there’s some kind of personal motivation to the fires. Over the course of the book, as Parker and Willow fall deeper and deeper in love (albeit denying it for most of the way there), the investigation into who is setting the fires continues. The fires get closer and closer to home until everything Parker loves is put at risk.
Parker’s red Labrador, Ember, assists him to investigate as she is trained to sniff out accelerant. Sadly there wasn’t enough Ember in the story for me. (I’m a firm believer that a series called “K-9 Defenders” should have much more dog.)
I have previously enjoyed Patrick Zeller’s narration and there was a lot to like here too. I like the way he uses the character voice which applies to whoever’s POV he’s in. Any narration that’s not dialogue as well as the dialogue from the POV character is in that same voice. It’s a clear signal to the listener of a change and it helped me orient myself in the story. He’s also good with emotion – although… ultimately here I thought it was just a bit too much. For me it needed to be pulled back a little. It seemed overacted and at times, overwrought.
When a character is excited – anxious or scared for example, Mr. Zeller speeds his voice up quite a bit. Now, this is a true reflection of how things work in real life but in this listen, it was just a little too fast, a little too much.
If he’d pulled it back about 20% the narration would have been in the A range for me.
I wasn’t surprised by the reveal of the arsonist (I picked who it was very early on) and there were aspects of the story which were a little overwrought too, but overall the listen was enjoyable and entertaining.
Grade: B
I’m over at Dear Author with a review of Love Hard by Nalini Singh. Oh so delightful.
I’m over at Dear Author with Janine again, with a spoilerific discussion Someone to Honor by Mary Balogh. We had so much we wanted to say and it was too spoilery for release week so we decided to split the conversation into two parts.
NetGalley Reviewer
Currently Reading
Copyright
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
