Narrated by Suehyla El Attar
A trend in romance novels: the small town series, where everybody knows everybody’s business, there are a bunch of love-starved singles and another bunch of sometimes lovable, sometimes irascible odd characters. This is Lucky Harbor, a small town on the Washington state coast. Mallory Quinn is a local girl whose family was torn apart when her older sister committed suicide some dozen or so years ago. Her reaction was to be the quintessential good girl, her profession as nurse to take care of everyone. Into her life slams Mysterious Cute Guy, so named by Lucille, the town’s old busybody who posts town gossip on Facebook. His actual name is Ty but his background is mysterious. He is in Lucky Harbor to recuperate from a plane crash in which all his buddies were killed. To be honest, I was always a little confused about whether this happened while he was a SEAL or after that while he was working with a government contractor doing something never exactly fully revealed. He kept pretty mysterious about all that, even from the reader.
Although he did know some of the locals with whom he worked out and whose cars he fixed, it wasn’t until he was forced into an awkward date with Mallory to a fundraiser that the rest of the town learned his name. Even Mallory didn’t know his name at this date. However, by this time Mal had decided she needed to shed her good girl status – so they had sex on the first date, at the fundraiser, in a storage room. Go figure.
The rest of Lucky in Love is pretty much as you would figure – she decided it should just be a one night stand, they had this major soul mate attraction and fought it, he kept his background a secret while she wore her heart on her sleeve, yada yada yada. There was a health clinic whose funding was at stake, some drug addicts and some missing drugs… It was ok – I was entertained but found my mind wandering from time to time. The story suffered from some loose plotting and some meandering storylines, not to mention the over-dependence on the town busy bodies to provide conflict. Really, if one more person brought up Mallory’s reputation, as if this were a Regency and not a book taking place in the 21st century…
Suehyla El Attar is the narrator for two books in this series. She has a good, maybe-thirty-something contemporary delivery that works well. She does have a distinctly lower pitch for Ty that differentiates him well from the heroine. She also pitches Mallory a little higher than her narrative voice, making the distinction that much clearer. Each of the town’s various characters also has his or her own accent, pitch, and other attributes. There were a few, small issues – once or twice the big breath mid clause, an oddly timed pause or two, things that made me cringe while listening. Because I felt the book was in the ok-but-not-great range, I tried to keep that from coloring my opinion of her narration. Her narrative skills are really good, but these skills did not make the story better than it was. I enjoyed the experience, but I wasn’t inspired by it. However, I did listen to the entire book after three DNFs in a row!
I have also been reading the series in print, but I think this works as a stand-alone. The first six books in the series are available on audio, with three different narrators.
Melinda
Narration: B
Book Content: B-/C+
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence: none
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Hachette Audio
