Narrated by Sean Crisden and Alexandria Wilde
Fall Guy
I am not widely read in New Adult romance but for the most part, I have loved what I have read. However, had I listened to this one first, I may have been more cautious about dipping my toe in the water. I have heard criticism of first person present tense on Twitter mainly because it seems to be associated with minutiae. Other books I have read or listened to which have been told in first person present tense haven’t necessarily had that problem but in Fall Guy, I can see what people are complaining about. There seemed to be long periods where nothing was happening but I heard about it in excruciating detail.
Evan is, I think 18. She is a senior in high school but is an adult in court (she and Winch meet there and again when doing community service) and Winch is 4 years older. Evan has just had a bad breakup where her (now ex-) boyfriend was cheating with her (now ex) BFF. Her parents have separated (or divorced – it was not entirely clear) and she is living with her grandparents in Savannah, Georgia and going to a new school with an ugly uniform. Her (new) best friend is Brenna, who lives in New Jersey. How they came to be friends when they live so far apart is one of the few details the book doesn’t canvass.
Winch is mysterious. He does something for his family. Something he’s not happy about which means his relationship with Evan is doomed. Nevertheless, he is so compelled to be near her, he breaks all his rules. To be honest, the mystery factor was drawn out so long that by the time I finally found out what it was, I didn’t really care.
Evan in particular sounded very young and, while both characters were immediately attracted to one another, I never really felt why they fell in love. Most of the book takes place over a few short weeks and there was a Romeo and Juliet feel to the speed and melodrama of the relationship – even though spoiler alert – no one dies.
There were problems with inconsistent characterisations too. The most glaring example was that of Evan’s mother who is described as a woman who doesn’t like to work for anything. However, Evan was their only child after years of miscarriages and fertility treatments. Those things, frankly, do not go together. What made her even more curious is that, having gone to so much trouble to have a child, she basically abandons her daughter when her marriage fails. Again, this didn’t make sense to me.
I enjoyed the sections from Winch’s POV more than those from Evan’s. Partly because it is Winch who has the story arc here – he is the only character who grows or changes in the story (Evan remains the same) and partly because I found Sean Crisden a much more entertaining narrator.
Narrator Alexandria Wilde was okay, but not great. I am not an expert on a Savannah accent so I don’t know if all the men sound angry in real life, but that was the case with the male characters Ms. Wilde voiced. Winch, when she spoke his lines, had a clipped Southern accent and he seemed to always sound aggressive. This may have been why I had trouble working out why Evan liked him so much. Evan’s voice was sometimes difficult for me to understand. For example, at one point she says “Jace is homeless” and I thought, ‘hang on, how did she know that?” and then I realised she actually said “Jace is harmless”. Evan sounded whiny and spoiled but I’m not sure the narrator can be criticised for this because I think I would have found her that way had I read the book too.
Mr. Crisden, however, had more nuance in his tone and Winch sounded a lot nicer. Evan was marginally less whiny to the ear but not less spoiled. Because I wasn’t really enjoying the story and I was impatient for it to end (there seemed to be so much time when nothing happened – unless you count finding out that the lamb chops at a particular restaurant were too dry – it was easy to vague out), I tried to pay special attention to the narrators to help pass the time. When I’m enjoying the story, for the most part I don’t really think about the narrators. I’m too immersed. It is really only when the narrator does something which jars that I notice them in a gripping listen. But here, because the story was the opposite of gripping, I had to try something else. If Ms. Wilde were to use a midwestern US accent (i.e., in a different book) instead of the one she adopted here, I would find her narration more pleasing to the ear. I think (although it is hard to know) that it was the accent she used that made Winch sound so aggressive and angry and I’m sure it was the accent which made some of the words indistinct. In other words, I would enjoy Ms. Wilde’s narration in a better story with a different accent.
Sean Crisden was much easier to listen to. I liked his characterisations better and he certainly made Winch seem nicer. He didn’t fall into the falsetto trap with his female portrayals and most of the characters were reasonably well differentiated, although his younger brother, Colt (yes, really) and another called Remington (I am not kidding) sounded a lot like Evan actually (but he wasn’t in the story much so that wasn’t a big issue).
In the end, Mr. Crisden’s narration engaged me enough to plug me back into the story and actually cheer Winch on at the end and not just because I was reaching the end of the book either. Winch does make decisions to change his life for the better and stand up for himself against those who wish him to remain the “fall guy” and I was happy for him.
Still, the listen did feel really long and I was glad to finish. I can’t say I’d be rushing to try any further books in the series.
Kaetrin
Narration: C+
Book Content: C-
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence: Fighting
Genre: New Adult
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Fall Guy was provided to AudioGals for review by Tantor Audio.
3 thoughts on “Fall Guy by Liz Reinhardt”
Comments are closed.