Narrated by Laurie West & Ryan West
The Prospect begins two years before the main action with Jax Tanner, a member of the Silver Lake Sluggers, “the elite summer baseball team for the nation’s best college players”. 19-year-old Jax has a thing for a local girl, Bree McTavish, who has just graduated from high school.
Bree thinks Jax is everything she could want in a guy, but the girls of Silver Lake are raised on stories about what happens when they make the mistake of falling for a prospect. Bree’s best friend was the product of a relationship with a local girl and a prospect who abandoned her mother to follow his dream of playing baseball. Bree herself is an only child, her mother passed away when she was young, and her father is a total jerkface who kicked her out when she graduated. Being abandoned is therefore a big fear and she’s extremely cautious about forming attachments.
Bree and Jax have one night together but then Bree puts as much distance as she can between them because she doesn’t want to get any more caught up in him than she can help. She does not believe it could end well for her. Jax is going places and Bree is not.
The main story picks up two years later when Jax returns for his annual summer baseball camp in Silver Lake. He’s now a junior in college and the draft is just around the corner. He was touted as one of the top rookie prospects but a shoulder injury the winter before has made the scouts wary. Jax doesn’t know if he will have a career in baseball at all or if he will languish in the minors. He doesn’t know what he will do otherwise.
Bree is currently living out of her car and sneaking into the pantry at night to sleep because it’s still cold out. She’s been fending for herself for two years but unexpected financial setbacks meant she could not afford to remain in her apartment. She works as a cook at the historic mansion where the Sluggers stay over the summer, so she runs into Jax all the time.
Bree has plans to scrimp and save for the next three months to add to her meagre savings and then head to Lansing and the culinary school at the community college there. She will have enough for college and an apartment if she sacrifices now. She plans eventually to open her own restaurant.
Jax quickly discovers Brie is homeless and offers his suite as a safe and warm place for her to stay while he’s there. As a senior member of the team he doesn’t have to share a room anymore. It’s against the rules to have Bree there but so what? And, you guessed it, THERE’S ONLY ONE BED.
Jax and Bree have to learn how to talk to one another about what’s real and what’s important and, they have to decide what is the most important and what they’re willing to sacrifice and risk to get it.
The characters are almost painfully naïve in a lot of ways and very innocent. Some of the things Jax was surprised about from a sexual perspective had me raising my eyebrows a little and I was a bit taken aback by Bree’s description of their first time together being “perfect” when it was missing a critical event for her. (I can imagine a range of reactions from okay to fantastic but perfect was a bit much.)
I kept forgetting that Bree and Jax were only 20/21 respectively and in part that’s because of the narration. The story is told in alternating first person (present tense) with Laurie West narrating the sections from Bree’s perspective and Ryan West (I wonder if they’re related or it’s just a coincidence?) narrating Jax’s. Both narrators sounded much older than 20. Their tones were more suited to leads in their late 20s or 30s at least.
Ryan West had a quality to his tone sometimes which is difficult to describe; something a little too deliberate and earnest which had the effect of occasionally making something sound more serious than it was. It wasn’t always inappropriate of course.
Laurie West’s voice for Jax sounded a little painful to me. The rumbly gravelly pitch didn’t feel like it was comfortable for her to use but it was easily identifiable, so it served its purpose. I couldn’t help but be a little concerned for her vocal cords though!
Apart from those things, the narration was technically well done and engaging. I liked both performances and would listen to them again – but perhaps in audiobooks where they’re cast more age appropriately.
The Prospect wasn’t Lyssa Kay Adams debut, but it was originally published (in print) in 2017 and so it is one of her earlier books. Don’t expect the smoothness of her later releases. At just under five hours, it’s a quick, enjoyable listen with a kinda-sorta An Officer and a Gentleman vibe.
Kaetrin
Buy The Prospect by Lyssa Kay Adams on Amazon
