Narrated by Tanya Eby
Drifter/slacker April Johnson is nothing like her siblings. With 2 high-achiever, successful older brothers, including a gold-medal Olympian, the heroine of Not Quite Perfect has given up on trying to compete, and now spends her days as a temp, wishing she could be an artist. She’s just been abandoned by her latest boyfriend, who left without paying the rent, so she’s also homeless, along with his three-legged rescue dog, Stool. Against the wishes of her brother Liam, she moves back in with their mom. Then she finagles a temp job at Liam’s fitness wear company, in the graphic arts department, despite his conviction to keep family members off the payroll. Liam has also just hired a business consultant, Zach Fain, to help get the floundering company get back in the black.
There’s a meet-cute between Zach and April: when he first starts, he catches her sneaking into the art department to learn the software before convincing her brother to let her work there, and he can’t decide if she’s a college intern or a competitor breaking in to steal trade secrets, since she refuses to give her name. There’s a spark of interest there, either way, something he hasn’t felt since his wife died of cancer a few years before.
The story and style reminded me of other contemporary romances I love – right off the bat, I thought of Annabelle in Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Match Me If You Can, who also suffered in comparison to high achieving siblings, and Galway’s humor reminded me of Jennifer Crusie’s. Zach is in need of loosening and lightening up, and April is in need of just the opposite, so their journey sort of meets in the middle.
Tanya Eby is excellent with this type of light contemporary romance/romcom. She has a great range, pitching the male voices low enough to be credible, and giving each character distinct and consistent personalities. Her pacing is perfect, her comic timing spot on. I did look at my iPhone once or twice, because there were times she sounded a little like she was on helium – of course, digital devices don’t raise the pitch when speeded up like records or tapes, so that was not the issue. I sampled a number of Eby’s other books on Audible, and higher/faster is not her normal sound. However, on the next book in this series, the sample does sound slightly fast and slightly higher pitched, so maybe it’s a production thing – or maybe it’s an acting choice for the series. Overall, in spite of wondering about that, I enjoyed it.
This book and the others in the series will make fun beach reads this summer!
Melinda
Narration: B
Book Content: B-
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence Rating: None
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Eton Field
Not Quite Perfect was provided to AudioGals by Gretchen Galway for a review.
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