Narrated by Summer Morton and Brian Pallino
The Broken One is the first in Ruth Cardello’s Corisi Billionaires series, and I chose to listen to it mostly because I’d enjoyed listening to Brian Pallino in Avery Flynn’s Tomboy and wanted to listen to him again. Reviews of the book were mixed, but I’m pretty much all about the narrator, so I decided to give it a go; in the end, while the narration is excellent, the story was distinctly ‘meh’.
Having read the synopsis, I was surprised to see that none of the characters featured in the story were named “Corisi”. Which seemed odd, as that’s the series title. I was even more confused when I started listening, because the entire first chapter is about a little girl called Judy who has been told she has to re-do her school project – a family tree. According to the blurb, the main characters in this novel are called Sebastian, Heather and Ava; Judy talks to her Aunt Alethea and mentions Uncle Alessandro… but there’s no mention of anyone called Sebastian, Heather or Ava. I thought I’d requested the wrong book, or been sent a copy that had been marked with the wrong title! (It’s happened before). As the chapters progressed (Judy turns up again in the middle and then right at the end) it became clear that there’s an overarching plot that seems to do with Judy’s desire to find out her family’s secrets, but the framing device just didn’t work. Maybe it worked better in print, where it’s easier to flip pages or jump to the next chapter, but in audio it’s not so easy to do that; I didn’t know if, by skipping to the next chapter, I’d miss anything important (I wouldn’t have, as it turned out), so I had to stick with it until the story “proper” began in the next chapter.
Said story follows a well-trod, predictable path. Heather Ellis is the single mother of a four-year-old girl named Ava, having adopted her following the death, shortly after Ava’s birth, of her mother – who was Heather’s best friend. Her decision caused a rift in Heather’s relationship with her father, who didn’t agree with it, but Heather, a successful accountant running her own business, loves Ava dearly, has a support network of good friends and is happy with her lot.
Sebastian Romano lost his wife and unborn child in a car accident five years earlier and still feels that loss keenly. He went off the rails in the aftermath and drowned his sorrows in copious amounts of booze, but now he only allows himself to get shit-faced once a year, on the anniversary of their deaths. The rest of the time he’s a stone cold sober bastard; a ruthless businessman who cares only for expanding his family business, because it’s his way of making sure they’re all (his mother, father and three brothers (the youngest of whom is actually his cousin but adopted brother) ) taken care of and provided for.
But Sebastian’s emotionless life is sent into upheaval the afternoon he finds a stuffed toy in the parking lot of one of his stores, on – of all days – the anniversary. He can’t stand to look at it; reminded again of everything he’s lost, Sebastian later tells his assistant to get rid of it… although as luck would have it, she hasn’t found time to do that before Sebastian’s mother tells him that she’s seen a post on social media in which a woman is offering a $100 reward for the return of her daughter’s favourite toy.
I don’t need to elaborate more on the plot – we all know where this is going. But I had a number of problems with the story, the biggest of which was the total lack of chemistry between the leads. Sebastian has a talent for putting his foot firmly in his mouth around Heather, and behaves like a complete dickhead towards her the first couple of times they meet, so I wasn’t quite sure why she kept agreeing to see him. (Oh –wait; he’s hot and rich… or maybe she just sensed his man-pain?) To be fair, he’s really good with Ava at least, so he does earn some points there, and he does (sort of) redeem himself when he at last realises he’s not been living for the past five years, he’s merely been going through the motions and decides to rejoin the human race and do better than he has been doing. The problem there though, is that he races off to Italy to do his soul-searching and doesn’t even bother to tell Heather he’s going – so it serves him right when she calls him one evening only to wake him in the middle of the night!
Sebastian is your typical alpha-male-with-a-tragic-past-that-has-turned-him-into-a-human-iceberg, and honestly, his behaviour when he found the stuffed toy was so over the top it made me laugh rather than feel his pain. And Heather is nothing special. She’s not remarkable – lots of single mothers hold down good jobs and love their kids to bits – she’s not awful, she’s just… there; and despite her background (her mother walked out when she was very young, and she’d learned to shield herself from hurt by leaving before she could be the one left) I was irritated by her MO of walking away instead of talking things out.
Then there’s a weird moment when the owner of the business Sebastian is about to buy out comes to Heather to ask her if she can put in a good word – which had me rolling my eyes, because, really? And there’s a sub-plot about Heather’s dad – from whom she’s been estranged since adopting Ava – which seemed tacked on and rather pointless. (Spoiler – this happens late on, but they agree to meet so Heather can introduce him to Ava and when they do, he practically ignores Ava and continues to tell Heather she did the wrong thing. So why did he agree to meet with her at all?)
The only thing that kept me listening to this was the narration, which is excellent. Brian Pallino (who also records under another, very well-known name) is my current voice crush and does a great job with his characterisation of Sebastian, bringing a cold snarl to his voice in the earlier parts of the story where he’s abrupt to the point of rudeness to his brothers (who snark back and don’t take any of his crap) and to his employees (who have to suck it up). As the story progresses, we can hear him “thawing out” as his deep, slightly gravelly tone gradually becomes warmer and takes on a softer quality around Heather and Ava. His pacing and differentiation are excellent and he’s one of the best (if not THE best) of the current crop of powerhouse male narrators when it comes to performing female characters convincingly.
My eyes tell me I haven’t listened to Summer Morton before (I don’t have anything by her in my audiobook library), but my ears tell me otherwise; her voice sounded very familiar, so I’m wondering if she records using another name as well. Whatever the case, she also delivers a well-paced, well-characterised performance, giving adorable voice to Ava and lowering her pitch in order to portray the male characters. Both sex scenes in the book are related from Heather’s PoV, and Ms. Morton does her best to inject some degree of heat into them, but the material she’s given to work with is dull and uninspired, and her efforts were, sadly unsuccessful. And that can be said about the whole book. Both narrators do their best to create an emotional connection between the characters, but if it’s not there to begin with (and it isn’t) then they’re fighting a losing battle. Two such talented performers deserve better material than this.
Caz
Buy The Broken One by Ruth Cardello on Amazon
