Just the Sexiest Man Alive by Julie James

Narrated by Karen White

Each of the contemporary romance/romantic comedy authors I love to read have a totally different way of approaching the genre. My first love, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, has a sort of wacky way of looking at the world through the eyes of her rather oddball protagonists: a circus manager and a rich girl, a former First Lady and a journalist, a bombshell NFL team heiress and the team’s coach. Susan Andersen features a lot of family dynamics, and not always family-by-blood, in funny situations. Rachel Gibson often uses modern-woman-foibles as the comic turn. For Julie James, it’s the smart and smart-ass dialogue with her heroines who somehow manage to say just the right things at just the right time, making me laugh out loud and want to high five her at the same time.

Just the Sexiest Man Aliveis James’ debut novel from 2008 (recorded in 2010), and this weekend I had a hankering for something tried and true, no surprises, that I knew I would enjoy, so I did a relisten to Karen White’s narration of this smart and sassy story.

Taylor Donovan is a hot-shot young lawyer from Chicago, on loan to her firm’s LA office for a big case in her specialty, employment law – specifically sexual harassment in the workplace. Coincidentally, hot-shot actor and People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive Jason Andrews has asked her firm to let him spend time with a lawyer as research for an upcoming film, and Taylor has to juggle a womanizing, bad-boy actor with a $30M lawsuit in the few months she is assigned to LA. She immediately takes a dislike to the playboy and pretty much manages to one-up him at every turn. Next thing you know, she’s The Mystery Woman, seen only from the back in photos with the Sexiest Man Alive.

I listened this time with a new perspective, based on feedback from other readers. For the critique that Karen White has a noticeable vocal pattern, I agree. I have noticed that she has a specific rhythm and tone to her narration – I did some sample-listening over at Audible, and find that even in her non-fiction reading, you can hear these characteristics. Personally, I found her narration fits Julie James’ “voice” to a T – her range is age-appropriate, her reading of the heroine fits exactly what I would expect from having read it first, her male voices are suitably different and she has a number of contrasting character voices. In later books, she even lowers the register a little to further emphasize the gender difference, but I was happy with Jason’s character as read. Even the pattern doesn’t become tedious or sing-songy for me; it’s just a part of the story. I also listened again for her accents – Australian and British accents are used on some minor characters. Since I’m American, I cannot really “hear” different country accents from that point of view, and honestly, on my first listen back in 2010, I didn’t notice the accents one way or the other. On subsequent listens (this one is probably my 4th time through), I have to agree that her Aussie accent isn’t exactly accurate, and the Aussie character Scott does play a rather significant role. And yet – and yet – I still love the story and White’s narration so much, that I don’t even care! Yeah, I’m the hypocrite who complained loudly about a regional US accent done poorly in another book, but really, it was practically unintelligible and practically every character!

We recently had a behind-the-scenes discussion about audiobook reviews and whether they should include a critique of the story as well as the narration. There was a blog post “out there” which touched on the dangers of “shooting the messenger” by folding the narration into a negative review of the book, when the narration might have been good even if the book was not. I don’t see how one can write a review without mentioning whether one enjoyed both the story and the narration. For JTSMA, I feel like the story and the narration are two halves of a whole piece – I loved the book but felt the narration enhanced the experience immensely, so that I cannot imagine the story without hearing Karen White narrating it. If the book had not been good, however, I don’t know that I would have enjoyed the narration and might have been a lot more critical. If the narration had been less than stellar, I might have found more problems with the story. I cannot seem to separate the two.

All in all, this is a totally A+ experience for me that seems to get better with each re-visit. It’s nice knowing that Taylor is going to one-up Jason in that first interview scene, and that Jason is going to jump through hoops trying to get Taylor to pay attention, and that in the end they are going to finally give in to their incredible attraction but continue to fight about whether she will change her name when they wed. Sigh! This is why I read romance!

Melinda

Narration: A+

Book Content: A+

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in, but it’s really, really tame, really

Violence: None

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Penguin Audio