Archer’s Voice by Mia Sheridan

Narrated by Kris Koscheski and Emily Durante

Mia Sheridan is one talented author. She writes in a contemporary new adult genre that spans several years in her characters’ lives (Amazon calls it “coming-of-age”) and she has the grounding of compassion and humor required to help any of us relate to the angst of early and late childhood, as well as all stages of adulthood. There are many ages that I do not relish re-living, but somehow, with Sheridan at the helm, I can feel the empathy without the pain. I end up falling in love with her characters as much as I do her writing.

Archer’s Voice is a book with two different points-of-view. Bree Prescott is a young woman running to find a fresh start in Maine. She brings the burden of PTSD and the loss of her father with her, yet retains unquenchable hopefulness as she sets up life in a remote rental home, riding her bicycle to work at a diner every day. When she stumbles, literally, at the feet of a tall, striking, hairy young man – dropping her groceries and tampons – she is mortified as he remains speechless. Her silent stranger turns out to be the town’s hermit, Archer Hale; a young man rendered physically unable to speak because of his own tragic mystery. As Bree is drawn closer into Archer’s remote world, he is reluctantly drawn towards Bree’s warmth, even as the dangers they both face fight to keep them apart.

The decision to use two narrators, Kris Koscheski as Archer and Emily Durante as Bree, clearly supports the structure that Sheridan has created with alternating points of view. This is accompanied by occasional flashbacks on the parts of both characters – a mechanism that would be a lot harder to keep straight without the two different narrations. The choice in narrator pairing makes the book for me.

The story begins with Archer as a child, and Koscheski does a good job of sounding immature without being a caricature. His (and the author’s) innocent descriptions of impending menace are heartbreaking. Near the end of the book, I fell in love with his voice as much as I did Archer (well, almost as much).

Durante as Bree is fluid and changes emotions during the narration, as well as doing a good job of articulating the different voices of girlfriends and aged neighbors. My only criticism is that she projects a slight “California valley girl telling a story” kind of inflection, that makes me expect her to burst out into “and THEN, like, y’know, for sure”. However, as I got absorbed into the story, I forgot about this pattern (it might have been deliberate; it disappeared in the “aged neighbor”).

This was the first of Mia Sheridan’s books that I had ever read, and it resulted in a mad dash to find and read the rest (and put her most recent, Kyland, on auto-purchase). I didn’t even stop to analyze why, until I caught my breath a few days later. Sheridan has done an outstanding job creating male characters that exhibit just as many appealingly vulnerable characteristics as they have alpha-male traits (her husband must be one awesome man). While Archer has enormous barriers to overcome, and initially leans on and is in awe of Bree, the story evolves to the point that his innate pride and honor (and love) insist on his evolution to stand as his own man.

I am not the only one in love with this simple and yet intricate love story; Lauren Levine, award winning producer of Bridge to Terabithia, has purchased the film rights to Archer’s Voice.

Victoria

Narration: B

Book Content: A

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Domestic Violence

Genre: New Adult – Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Archer’s Voice was provided to AudioGals by Tantor Audio for review.