Once in a Lifetime by Jill Shalvis

Narrated by Annie Green

I’ve been a fan of Jill Shalvis generally and her Lucky Harbor series in particular. She writes small town contemporary really well and has a real gift for “guy dialogue”. Once in a Lifetime is Book 9 of the Lucky Harbor series and tells the story of Aubrey Wellington and Ben McDaniel (I realised after I started, that I hadn’t read book 8 yet – bad Kaetrin. But it’s okay because the books stand-alone fairly well).

Aubrey is a very attractive woman who has often been judged on her looks alone. It wasn’t helped by her mother’s passion for entering her into beauty pageants as a child. Her sister, Carla, is just as pretty, but she’s known for her brains. Aubrey has a reputation for being a bitch but really, I didn’t see that. It seemed as those judgements were made at a distance by people who didn’t know her at all. Nevertheless, Aubrey accepts this assessment of her character and at the start of the story, she decides to make amends for her mistakes and makes a list of seven people (only seven Aubrey? #Bitchfail. If I made a list (and I’m not generally regarded as a bitch), it would probably have way more than seven names on it. Just saying.) One of the names on her list is Ben.

Ben came to live in Lucky Harbor when he was twelve, after his parents dumped him with his aunt and uncle and took off, never to be seen again. He was absorbed into the family and raised as a brother to his cousin, Jack, and he turned out okay in spite of what his parents did. He was married to his high school sweetheart but she died in a car accident five years ago. After she dies, he quit his job as water engineer for the county and started going to remote, war-torn, and/or devastated areas designing water systems for the stricken populations. He’s back in Lucky Harbor and thinking maybe it’s okay to stay now. Maybe it’s time. He doesn’t think he’s ready for any kind of committed relationship though.

Aubrey has opened a bookshop next door to friends Leah (bakery) and Ali (florist) and wants to do some remodelling before the grand opening. Her uncle hires Ben for the carpentry work as a gift to Aubrey and thus, the two are thrust into each other’s company. Ben is forced to revise his opinion of “beautiful bitchy Aubrey” as he gets to know her. He sees how hard she works in the shop, how smart she is, and he also sees her list and puts two and two together. He admires her very much and is not unaffected by her physical charms.

Aubrey, for her part, has had a crush on Ben since high school but she knows nothing can ever come of it. Once she apologises to him for her mistake – something he doesn’t know about but will hate her for once he knows – there can be no future for them, even if relationship-shy Ben were willing to try again. Of course, proximity + attraction = sexy times in Romancelandia (hooray!) and as Ben and Aubrey get closer, Aubrey’s secret looms large and Ben has to decide if he’s ready to try again, knowing what it’s like to lose someone.

Shalvis’s trademark humour softens some of the heavier aspects of the story but at its heart, it is a tale about forgiveness and moving on – from mistakes, from loss. There is a delightful pair of twin girls whom Ben takes under his wing (I enjoyed this little subplot quite a bit. If the girls were plot moppets, I didn’t care) and some fun with Lucky Harbor’s Facebook page and its randy senior citizens, and a gentle poke at the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey. I enjoyed the banter between the girls and the guys – their methods of communication are different but each in their own way demonstrated a close connection.

I felt quite protective of Aubrey fairly early in the book. She just didn’t seem that horrible to me and I disliked how she was always to blame for things when she was more sinned against than sinner.

I was very impressed by Annie Green’s narration. This was my first experience of her talent but it certainly won’t be my last. She reminded me in style, of Sophie Eastlake. Her voice isn’t exactly the same but she had the same kind of manner and a similar way of portraying her male characters. If listeners like Sophie Eastlake, I think listeners will also like Annie Green.

Ms. Green delivered the snap and sizzle of the banter between Aubrey and Ben, as well as performing various secondary characters with skill. I particularly liked her little girl voice for “Pink”. There was a large cast of characters in Once in a Lifetime and most of them (particularly the females) felt well differentiated. While Luke, Jack, Sam, Ford, and Ben sounded fairly similar, I didn’t have trouble working out who was who – the dialogue tags were sufficient if the differentiation wasn’t entirely clear.

I found Annie Green’s narration to be pleasing to the ear and her pacing and technical skill was also very good. I could wish she had a greater (and deeper) vocal range of male characters but there are quite a few narrators who don’t and to whom I still enjoy listening.

One thing that did bother me right at the end was the music which came up to indicate the end of the CD. This actually hindered my ability to listen to the last couple of sentences in the book – and they were the kind of sentences one especially wants to hear because they were sealing the HEA. And romance is all about the HEA, am I right? The music was too loud and/or it came in too early and that happy sigh moment turned into more of a discontented growl.

Otherwise, Once in a Lifetime was a lot of fun and audio was definitely a good way to experience what I find to be an upbeat, flirty, and sexy contemporary series.

Kaetrin

Narration:  B

Book Content:  B

Steam Factor:  Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence:  Minimal

Genre:  Contemporary Romance

Publisher:  Hachette Audio

Once in a Lifetime was provided to AudioGals for review by Hachette Audio.

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