Narrated by Joel Leslie
Apart from the author/narrator combination, which is usually a sure win for me, the big attraction of Peter Cabot Gets Lost was the 1960’s setting. It feels like a very underrepresented historical period within romance and ripe for more exploration.
Peter Cabot is the son of a US Senator making a run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Peter has just graduated college (Harvard) and his presence has been demanded at home in Cape Cod to assist with campaigning. Peter is the disappointment of the family. He’s never been good enough and has never felt like he fit in.
Caleb Murphy has also just graduated from Harvard and the money he’d been relying upon to purchase his bus ticket to LA (where he has a journalism job lined up) has been used for a family emergency and now he’s stuck and desperate.
Peter has a car and an equally desperate need to be elsewhere and so tells Caleb he’s heading to LA anyway and offers to drive him across the country. Road trip!
Peter and Caleb crossed paths in college but they weren’t friends. In fact, both thought the other didn’t like them.
Over the course of the journey across the US, Peter and Caleb learn about one another and fall in love. It sounds simple but there’s obviously more to it than that.
Caleb comes from a poor family in rural Tennessee and has an understandable mistrust of the super-rich Cabot family. Caleb is also unsure, once his heart is engaged, whether Peter will stay or whether he will cave into his family’s demands to conform.
On the other hand, Caleb is more sexually experienced – Peter is gay but hasn’t “done anything” yet and this helps balance out the power dynamics to a degree.
The book takes place mostly over about ten days so there is a little bit of suspension of disbelief required to buy into the HEA but then again, if one can successfully navigate living in the pocket of an erstwhile virtual stranger for 10 days 24/7 who am I to say that’s not true love? There’s only a couple of people I could do this with and I’m married to one and gave birth to the other.
My biggest issue with the book was the names. Caleb and Cabot are very close to one another and for at least the first half of the story I kept confusing the two. I had to firmly tell myself that Peter was the Cabot and Caleb was the other protagonist. It took a while to sink in. Perhaps that says more about me than I should let on.
The narration was excellent. I’m used to Joel Leslie narrating books set in England so it was a bit of a shock to hear him using his actual voice! I’ve heard it before of course but more often than not, when I hear him speaking, it’s with a British accent of some sort.
Peter had a WASPy American accent (even though his family is Catholic – loosely modelled on the Kennedys I think?) and Caleb has the Tennessee twang which gets more pronounced when he’s upset or excited. Caleb’s voice was also a little lighter than Peter’s deeper tone so the two men were always well differentiated.
The book is mainly just Caleb and Peter; there are few side characters most of the time. When they do appear however, they are also well performed.
I liked the way Peter and Caleb communicated with one another and did not let misunderstandings fester. I also enjoyed “visiting” all the places along the journey from Boston to LA and listening to the 1960s flavour of the whole book. No cell phones, newspapers costing 3 cents a piece, the beginnings of the 60s civil rights movement – the setting was immersive and like I said before, different, which I so appreciated.
Once again choosing a Sebastian/Leslie audiobook was a low risk/high reward activity for me.
Kaetrin
Buy Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian on Amazon
I’m in agreement with you on most of this Kaetrin, but I had read ‘Tommy Cabot Was Here’ before reading this one so was clear on the characters. I think Peter briefly visits Tommy, who is his uncle, in that book. The aunt that Peter stays with in this book is Tommy’s ex-wife and I think the next book is to be her story. I really don’t know why this one has come out in audio before Tommy, which was published first!
I really enjoyed this book when I read it. The author herself says that not much happens and it is all about feelings and I was happy to go along with that. Like you, I enjoyed the references to 60s era America, which I only know from films and TV. The 1960s road trip aspect had some similarities with my favourite book of 2020, Aster Glenn Gray’s ‘Honeytrap’, but that, of course, has more plot.
I think Joel Leslie did a good job with the narration. I like it when he narrates with an American accent and he makes Caleb’s Tennessee accent stronger at times of emotion, just as the author writes in the book. He sounds like Trip from Star Trek Enterprise to me……
I hope ‘Tommy Cabot Was Here’ is released as an audiobook too as I enjoyed that story a bit more.
It will be released for sure – like you I thought it was a bit odd that book 2 came out first but I put it down to the vagaries of ACX/Audible rather than a specific choice by the author.
Yes, I really enjoyed this book. I read it as I don’t do audio books. Well, not yet anyway! I will read anything by Cat Sebastian
She’s fantastic – a reliably good go-to queer author.
um… perhaps I should have worded that differently. She writes queer romance but I’m not sure of her own orientation!