Narrated by Caitlin Davies
In Must Love Otters we listeners meet Hollie Porter, a 25-year-old 911 operator in Portland, Oregon and, so we are told, an animal lover – her particular favourite is the sea otter. Because the story is from Hollie’s first-person perspective, the listener gets to spend more than eight hours in Hollie’s head and it wasn’t apparent to me that she liked animals (other than the sea otter) very much at all. In fact, some of the things she admitted to doing or actually did during the story to other animals indicated just the opposite. Don’t get me started about the seagulls or the goat.
The blurb also indicated that the story was a romantic comedy but I didn’t find the humour all that funny so the two great attractors to me (animals and humour) failed to do any actual attracting. Alas.
Hollie isn’t very likable. She rarely has anything nice to say or think about anyone else, is very judgemental and kind of mean. Her arc over the course of the book doesn’t change any of that. In fact, her journey is to learn to say no rather than be a people pleaser! But she isn’t really a people pleaser at all. I didn’t get it. (I do agree that Hollie’s downstairs neighbour is a horror show but she only did things for Mrs. Hubert because she was scared of her – not to make her happy; Mrs. Hubert doesn’t do happy.)
Hollie tends to give awful names to folks she doesn’t like (and there are MANY of them) – for example, her manager at work is “Polyester Patty”. Hollie has many not nice things to say about how Patty overfills her polyester pants. A lot of the meanness -not just to Patty – is about weight, body parts, looks, etc. It’s not the sort of humour which does much for me.
When the book begins Hollie is in a relationship with Keith, a paramedic who likes to pretend he’s a doctor, but it is not going well. Hollie most objects to Keith’s three little Yorkshire terriers. And sure, they sound over-indulged and in need of some boundaries (more to do with Keith and Hollie herself than the canines themselves) but she has nothing nice to say about them. Nothing.
Anywho, Hollie, on probation at work for reasons which never made sense to me (how can she be responsible for someone dying from a reaction to Viagra??) and newly broken up with Keith, decides to take advantage of a gift certificate for a short holiday to Revelation Cove in Canadian British Columbia, given to her by her dad. She calls in sick to work and heads off for her vacation. Because that’s a thing you do.
There Hollie meets Ryan Fielding, who introduces himself as the concierge. For most of the rest of the book Ryan is “Concierge Ryan” something which was annoying really fast. She also meets Roger Swinyard and really, his name should tell you everything you need to know. Regardless of the warning signs, Hollie spends a lot of time with Roger and it is not until over SIX hours into the book that there is any actual romance between Hollie and the hero – Ryan. SIX. HOURS.
Technically I suppose the book meets genre requirements as it does have a HFN/HEA but there isn’t really a “central romantic relationship” unless you only count the last 2 hours or so of the story.
It took a looooooong time to get to the romance. And, when it finally came, for the most part it was pretty tame so the payoff wasn’t all that great.
I didn’t know what Ryan saw in Hollie because she wasn’t a very nice person. I generally like prickly and “unlikable” heroines. My comments about Hollie aren’t because I’m being hard on her out of some internalised misogyny. This label is often applied to female main characters when they stick up for themselves (particularly against men) and don’t let themselves be walked on. I’m all for that.
But I did not like Hollie. To me she was mostly mean. She did get better at sticking up for herself (kind of) late in the book but she didn’t have a revelation about her lack of kindness to others.
I liked Ryan better than Hollie, but there are a couple of things Ryan did that I gave the hard side-eye too; case in point when Hollie is caught naked outside of her room (because she can’t follow simple instructions or retain information for longer than five minutes apparently) he provides her a HANDTOWEL to cover herself. I guess it’s supposed to be funny but I thought it was mean and gross. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I’m not questioning whether I should have liked Ryan at all. Hmmm.
There were some strange narrative choices; secrets kept which didn’t really make sense in the story, a sharp (very sharp) right turn right near the end which did not fit with the romcom vibe at all and the aforementioned meanness to people and animals – all of which meant that the story mostly did not work for me.
The narration was a lot better than the story. Caitlin Davies couldn’t make Hollie someone I liked but it’s unfair to expect miracles. She had a wide range of character voices – various age ranges and gender differentials and her tone and pacing were good.
On the possibly unfair but kind of a pet peeve of mine, many times when Ms. Davies said a word like “forgotten” or “bitten” it would sound like “forgo’en” or “bi’en” – missing the t sound and using a glottal stop instead. Fortunately, she said “otters” just fine. It’s not uncommon for people to speak this way and it doesn’t draw the same reaction in me in real life, but I can’t say I loved it in the narration. Perhaps, had I been enjoying the story more, I’d have noticed it less.
And, speaking of noticing things less, the main thing that buzzed in my brain during this listen was that Ms. Davies had a somewhat odd cadence to her voice. The best way I can think to describe it is that it sounded like the musicality of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets – except without the accent. Once I picked it up, I kept tripping over it. That said, I don’t think I’d have been anywhere near as distracted by it if I had liked the story better than I did.
Because I can’t be entirely sure how much of my thinking about the narration was influenced by the fact that I did not enjoy the content, regardless of the performance, I’ve gone with a B for the grade. The narration was, for the most part, good.
But the content? I did not like it.
Kaetrin
Buy Must Love Otters by Eliza Gordon on Amazon
