Narrated by Sophie Eastlake
Dare to Love is Carly Phillips “debut” novel for her newly-reinvented indie-author self and the beginning of a family dynasty series. After releasing more than 30 romance titles, she made the leap from a traditional publisher model and what she called “sweet and sexy romance” to having more control over the writing and publishing process, and made the decision to turn up the heat as well. It’s a style that is hotter than a regular contemporary romance, and not exactly erotic romance.
Ian Dare is the oldest son of Robert Dare, who had 2 families with children – one legitimate, the other a long-time affair. Ian’s mother and siblings did not find out about the the other family until they were older – and now as adults, they all harbor grudges against their father Robert and the half-siblings of both mothers. This sets up Ian’s personality as someone who does not trust easily. When he meets Riley Taylor, she’s on the arm of her best friend, Alex Dare – one of the enemy half-brothers. But it’s lust at first site for both of them. Riley decides to walk away in order to keep her friendship with Alex, but soon after, her job is on the line and the first thing that pops out of her mouth is that she can count on Ian, president of one of 2 local professional football teams, to bail her out. (Like you do.) This brings them back together where the explosive chemistry and insta-lust takes over.
Riley loses her job anyway, so Ian hires her (beep! beep! beep! my inner alarm went off) to work in the team’s travel department, so that she is not actually working “for him”. Riley also has trust issues – her father beat up her mother regularly, and she has learned to avoid domineering men. She maintains her independence from everyone, never relying on anyone with the one exception of Ian’s hated half-brother. Meeting in the middle is tough for both Ian and Riley – he has to learn to accept his half-brother and give Riley space; she has to learn to trust Ian.
Phillips’ writing is technically good – good sentence structure, it makes sense, not too much exposition or info dump, credible dialogue. The plot itself is pretty thin – nothing unique or compelling in this storyline of down-on-her-luck girl meets dominant billionaire with love at first site, in about 250 pages. While this seems to echo the whole Fifty Shades phenomenon, that romance trope has been around for a long, long time (see the grocery store shelves with all the different “billionaire” and “sheikh” titles). I would say it’s not one of my favorite plots, but the truth is, I can enjoy almost any well written book with any trope.
I had a couple more alarms go off in my head: come on, it was released in 2013 and she has a land line that apparently doesn’t have caller ID? Because she answers it – it’s a hang up, rings again and she just assumes it’s the same person, which causes her to blurt out information she would otherwise not have revealed. Why didn’t she recognize the phone number? And the climactic twist with her father felt somewhat cliched, with a blackmail threat so tissue-thin, I did not buy it for a moment. It seemed a deliberate set up to put Riley in danger so Ian would have to save her. Their frank discussions of learning to trust made more sense, and I don’t think Riley needed to make stupid decisions to get to that point.
Because of Phillips’ decision to ramp up the sex, the love scenes make up a larger percentage of the word count than most books I read. This pushed me out of my comfort zone, only partly because they seemed slightly scripted, a tad clinical, not quite engaging enough. When I cringe because the heroine has a screaming orgasm in the hero’s office during work hours, I am pulled out of the story because I’m just not as involved in the characters as I would like to be. She was screaming, in his office! During work hours! And no one noticed? But while it touches on dominance and a bare hint of bondage – he uses his tie to bind her to the bedpost (Danger, Will Robinson: without her initial consent!) – the sex is pretty much vanilla, very graphically described, and oft-occurring. It’s not a case of inserting sex scenes gratuitously as much as that is pretty much all the characters think about (and do) when they are together.
But hey – it’s Sophie Eastlake narrating! And I love her! She has a great voice for contemporary, dramatic romance. She may also have a great voice for contemporary, humorous romance – I just haven’t listened to any* yet. Her pacing, her tone, her accents, her breath control – A+ across the board. She differentiates well between genders and between female voices, and almost as well between male characters, but I still just love her voice and narration skills. She reads those endless steamy scenes with total ease and she elevates a C-level story just because she reads it incredibly well. I saw a post from Ms Phillips on social media that she was considering changing narrators to cut costs – DON’T DO IT CARLY! Eastlake is the best! A lesser narrator will render your investment meaningless.
I liked the story well enough – I was entertained, if sometimes a bit uncomfortably. This is definitely the first time I wondered if people outside the car could hear my audiobook, which I play out loud over the car speakers. I mean, I can hear the music in other cars…
*Not counting Thea Harrison’s Elder Races, although there was humor.
Melinda
Narration: A+
Book Content: B-
Steam Factor: For your burning ears only
Violence: Domestic violence
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Carly Phillips
Dare to Love was provided to AudioGals by Carly Philiips for a review.
This was a freebie for me that I picked it up and tried to read awhile ago. I get bored with insta-lust and then constant lusting so I put it aside not too far into it. Definitely a different tone from her traditionally published works and IMO not to the better. However, it is a whispersync title so maybe I’ll have to try it in audio, since as you say – Sophie Eastlake! You’re right in that a change in narrators to (presumably) an unknown would discourage me completely from trying it.