Narrated by Emily C. Michaels
Second in a series featuring the 3 Bradshaw half-brothers, this one features Max, deputy sheriff in Razor Bay, WA, and Harper Summerville, a seasonal worker at the local inn. Harper is actually the representative of her family’s foundation, scoping out a local non-profit requesting a grant. The foundation routinely sends her in undercover for a few days to investigate charities while deciding whether to fund them. In this case, she takes a summer job in Razor Bay, giving her time to make friends and develop feelings for Max, something she has never done in her nomadic life.
Max volunteers for the charity, Cedar Village, a home for boys in trouble. He convinces Harper to volunteer as well, and their relationship grows from there. He identifies with the boys at Cedar Village because of his own upbringing. He was raised by a bitter single mother who wouldn’t let him forget that his father was too busy with his new family to pay any attention to him. Max retains those childhood feelings of being left behind, unloved and unwanted, so the relationship with a woman with one foot out the door at all times pushes all his buttons. Harper struggles with the idea that staying in one place too long will be her undoing, but Razor Bay offers things she has missed – girlfriends as well as a deepening relationship with Max. Will putting down roots be the end, or a new beginning?
I enjoyed the read in print, although I had a few nitpicky criticisms. Why did Andersen keep calling secondary character Tasha “the strawberry blond” instead of by her name? Small things like that occasionally drew me out of the story. The writing was good, the storytelling good, and generally I liked the characters. I missed Andersen’s humor from earlier books – not that it was overly dramatic, but everyone was level headed and mostly reasonable. No Lucy Ricardo moments – it’s classic small town romance.
Narrator Emily C. Michaels was unknown to me – she also narrated the first book in the series, released at the same time, as well as handful of other books all in the past 6 months. Her medium-age voice is pleasant, and she generally differentiates between characters well enough. She doesn’t have a very deep pitch for the men, and Max is the only one she tries to make deeper – all the others seemed to be roughly the same range as the women. I didn’t find her voicing of Harper to be consistent. Andersen describes Harper’s speech pattern as almost British because of her upbringing all over the globe, and also refers to it as smoky. There was a section where she voiced her a little lower and huskier, but the rest of the time she was pitched higher than Michaels’ narrative voice. She did use clipped consonants, but nothing resembling a British accent. But it was Michaels’ odd, unnatural pacing throughout that bothered me the most. She paused where there should not have been pauses, breathed when it was not a natural place to take a breath. This didn’t happen 100% of the time, so that some of it is narrated well enough to make it an average listen. Perhaps given better direction, she would have done a more consistent and natural narration. Being the Cranky Listener, I was not totally satisfied – I think a 5-star author like Susan Andersen deserves the best narration available – but it wasn’t a total fail for me either.
Melinda
Narration: C
Book Content: B+
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence: None
Genre: Contemporary romance
Publisher: Audible, Inc.
