You’re My Beat by Zarah Detand

Narrated by Joel Leslie

Zarah Detand’s You’re My Beat is a standalone contemporary romance with a friends-to-lovers vibe between a rock star and a ballet dancer – who happens to be his best friend’s little brother. With Joel Leslie in the narrator’s chair, I knew I’d be in safe hands (as it were) as far as the narration was concerned, but sadly, the story was a bit of a let-down.

After graduating from the Royal Ballet School, twenty-year-old Lucas Clarke is now the lead dancer and choreographer for a small dance company based in Bristol, his home town. Unfortunately, their sponsor has just pulled out, and Lucas’ brother Dan suggests that maybe he could ask his best friend, singing megastar Max Fina, if he will step in. That idea doesn’t go down well. When Lucas was younger, he had a massive crush on Max, and when he was sixteen, he kissed him – and was rejected. (But not because Lucas was only sixteen, or because he was his best friend’s little brother, or even because Max didn’t fancy him. No, it was because Max, then twenty, had just hit the big time and thought that maybe Lucas was only interested in his money and fame.) Lucas has moved on since then, of course, but the rejection still rankles – and he’s angry after overhearing a conversation backstage in which Max doesn’t refute the suggestion that he’s only sponsoring them to garner good publicity.

Max really wasn’t keen on Dan’s idea of sponsoring Lucas’ dance company, but his agent was – it’s always good publicity for someone in Max’s situation to be seen to be paying it forward. Once the deal is done, Dan takes a somewhat begrudging Max to a show – and from the minute Lucas takes to the stage, Max is utterly blown away. Max had known Lucas went to the Royal Ballet School, of course, but had no idea just how good a dancer he is – and he ends up not only sponsoring the Jiggin’ Urchins, but inviting them to accompany him on his upcoming world tour. Lucas’ instinct is to say no – and he does at first – but then realises it’s not fair to the rest of the company to turn down a fantastic opportunity to perform to capacity crowds all over the world and agrees to call everyone together for a vote. Which is, obviously, an overwhelming “yes”. (Um, yeah. Just go with it.) With only eight weeks to go until the start of rehearsals, Lucas is going to have to work fast to choreograph the chosen numbers, and he and Max soon find themselves in regular contact, as Max, who is genuinely interested in what Lucas is doing, asks how he’s getting on, and Lucas sends him videos of his ideas for the various songs. Lucas has also decided it’s time to let go of any lingering animosity towards Max, and over the next few months, during the lead up and the rehearsals, a real friendship develops between them, despite the fact that Max has begun to see Lucas in a different light. It’s far safer for him to remain firmly in the friend-zone; Max has no wish to screw up their friendship and make things awkward during the ten-month-long tour just for the sake of a few hook ups.

I love slow-burn romances and I love romances that are founded in friendship, so You’re My Beat should have worked for me a lot better than it did. The biggest problem is that it’s all of the slow with none of the burn; Max and Lucas spend nearly all the book firmly friend-zoned and seeing/hooking-up with other people – despite the fact that Lucas is obviously still in love with Max, and Max is developing feelings for Lucas – and the chemistry between them is weak at best. Strong chemistry is essential for a slow-burn to really work, and sadly, that’s missing here, which made it hard for me to become invested in the relationship. I’m sorry to say I was bored for most of the book until it really picked up in the final few chapters. Which is when…

We’re not given any information about how Max has achieved the level of fame he has, and there is no frame of reference for it. We know he’s a big star because he’s on a year-long world tour, playing all the big venues (five nights at Madison Square Garden, etc. etc.) and at one point we’re told he’s chatting with Harry Styles and Ed Sheeran – is that the level of fame we’re meant to infer? It’s not made clear. And there’s a really big suspension of belief needed to buy the idea of inviting a little-known contemporary dance group onto a worldwide stadium tour.

Also, I don’t know if the author is British, but the characters are. Max and Lucas are originally from Brighton, so the Americanisms (elevator, candy, resume, fall etc.) are really jarring.

Joel Leslie is someone I know I can always rely on to deliver a strongly-characterised and expertly differentiated performance, and he does exactly that here. Lucas and Max are easy to tell apart by virtue of a difference in pitch, and the accents adopted for some of the secondary characters – scouse for Lucas’ bestie, Sophia, Northern Irish for Max’s bestie, Jake – are well done and consistent throughout. At this point, I would usually be talking about how good Mr. Leslie is at bringing out the characters’ emotions – but the trouble is that there’s not much in the text for him to actually emote. There’s no real humour in the story and the only emotional highs and lows happen near the end; most of the time, the story is just chugging along on an even keel so there’s nothing for Mr. Leslie to really exercise his acting chops on!

And finally. To keep the dialogue sounding contemporary, the author peppers it with ‘like’s and ‘y’know’s and ‘right?’s – as in ‘I went to the, like, bus stop, but the bus didn’t come, y’know?’ or ‘I went to the bus stop, right?’ (not actual quotes!) but the trouble is that while, in print, my eyes would probably just gloss over those words and phrases, in audio they’re incredibly repetitive and they stick out like sore thumbs. I know the generally accepted wisdom is to record an audiobook word for word, but this one could have done with a bit of editing beforehand to remove a load of those likes, y’knows and rights, to make it less grating to listen to.

Here’s an actual example – Max has asked Lucas if the group will come on tour with him and his band:

“I mean… you’re joking, right?”

“Why would I be joking?”

“Just– you realise that we haven’t just been waiting around for you to, like, uproot our lives, right?”

Sometimes, less really IS more.

The majority of the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads disagree with my assessment, but You’re My Beat was a disappointment. There’s no chemistry between the leads, the romance is almost non-existent and the repetition of certain words and phrases were like nails down a blackboard as the hours mounted up. I might try another book by Zarah Detand, but as this is (so far) her only audiobook, it’ll have to be in print.

Caz