Narrated by Kate Russell and Sebastian York
This is a tough review to write. There were things about this book that I loved, but one major and one minor building block of this relationship that didn’t sit well with me. Unfortunately, the blurb doesn’t flush out most of this story (instead just giving you a glimpse of these characters at a point in time) and I don’t want to give away too much and ruin the development of the story for you, so I will have to dance around what I didn’t like without giving away too many details. This also means that I will not provide a traditional background factual recitation for this story for fear of giving too much away.
First, what I loved. The narration was simply top-notch! Kate Russell blew it out of the park with her range in voices, as well as her emotional, inspiring, and well attuned delivery. You get a good sense of the heroine’s perspective from Ms. Russell’s delivery. Not only does she clearly tell her story, but she also does it in an empathetic fashion that makes you root for the heroine to find her HEA.
Sebastian York ‘s narration also works incredibly well in this story. Mr. York’s narration time, although much shorter than Ms. Russell’s, was the perfect accentuation of the hero’s point of view. He nailed what I pictured in my head for this hero’s voice, and given the incredibly hot nature of this story, he did a fantastic job with those passages as well.
Another aspect that I enjoyed about this story is that it ended up being more complex than I was expecting. With both the hero’s and heroine’s backstories featuring prominently in the stumbling blocks towards, and the development of, their relationship (but not being described in the blurb), it is no surprise that a large part of this romance is in facts unfolding as the characters get to know each other, as well as their own individual wants and desires in a relationship. There is also another serious theme mixed in which I wasn’t expecting and that challenged my acceptance of another circumstance in the story that I normally would have outright rejected. Some of my favorite romances are those that cause the listener to have to think outside of the box, and J. Daniel’s certainly hit that cord with me in Four Letter Word.
However, the hero holds back one serious fact about himself when he first starts his physical relationship with the heroine. This one fact is a big one, and you don’t even get a sense that he is troubled by the deception once he decides to undertake this relationship with the heroine. I personally kept thinking throughout this part of the book that I must have missed something. He couldn’t just decide for the heroine whether this was something she was willing to accept, given the eventual impact on her. However, that’s exactly what the hero did, even obviously knowing that the day of reckoning was coming. Moreover, he proceeded full steam ahead from zero to sixty planning love and marriage pretty much the night after the couple first get physically together without thought of the impact of this very important fact he was withholding.
So, all in all, this is a tough story to rate. I think it will work for most listeners, but not all. In fact, this story has a very respectable almost 4-star rating average on Goodreads out of over 6,000 ratings. However, if you are like me, there are things that you will love and other aspects that you will question about the plot. Nonetheless in totality, particularly given the stellar narration, I think Four Letter Word is definitely worth a listen.
BJ
Narration: Kate Russell: A / Sebastian York: A-
Book Content: B
Steam Factor: For your burning ears only
Violence Rating: Minimal
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Four Letter Word was provided to AudioGals by Hachette Audio for a review.
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