Narrated by Barbara Rosenblat
Delinsky has a unique story-telling mode that is a sort of hybrid of women’s lit and romance, nowhere more evident than in Flirting With Pete. The reader is drawn into a mystery right from the beginning when introduced to Jenny Clyde, a woman who has just hit her father with a car and run away. Then the story shifts to the heroine, Casey Ellis, and her troubled relationships with her father and mother, and the woman she is today. By the end of the story, the mystery that swirls throughout the story like the fog in Little Falls has revealed all the various ties that bind the characters together. The stories are so real, so emotional, so filling, and I was reaching for the tissue box for refills.
I’m already a big fan of narrator Barbara Rosenblat. One of my all-time favorite audiobooks is her narration of Judith Ivory’s The Indiscretion, with its wide variety of characters and accents and funny situations. She brings the same feeling to Flirting With Pete – she has an incredible, wide range of voices and accents and placement, as well as the perfect narrative delivery. She uses several local northeastern accents – not that I’m an expert on what they should sound like, but they were each different enough to evoke different locales, different levels of education and age and other qualities that give people their own personalities. And she’s extremely consistent with those deliveries.
Before I read it, and even more than halfway through, I would have classified the story as women’s lit with a strong romance thread, but in hindsight, I can see more clearly the structure is romantic suspense. There’s no question that Casey’s career and her relationships with her parents dominate the beginning, but the mystery of Jenny Clyde and its effect on Casey drive the story and the resolution which is a real HEA in every possible definition. I’m just not going to introduce the hero because it’s a revelation best done by Rosenblat reading Delinsky!
Melinda
Narration: A+
Book Content: A
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in, but it’s not very graphic for those of you squeamish about such things
Violence: References to domestic violence, and there are some deaths but nothing gruesome
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romantic Suspense
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
*I’ve never read a book by Delinsky. I had it in mind that she was strictly women’s fiction. But I enjoy romantic suspense and this sounds like an interesting book, so maybe I’ll give her a try. Plus, you have me very curious about the hero. ;-)