Love at First Sight by Lori Wilde

Narrated by C.J. Critt

I have a practical scale for judging the success of an audiobook for me. The very top is where I do extra housework and exercise or drive out of my way so I can keep listening. The next one down is listening at every opportunity but not creating those opportunities. Then there are the ones where I listen sometimes but tend to intersperse the experience with other things – listening to music, the radio, or a podcast. Then there’s the bottom category where I give my iPod the side-eye and think seriously about hiding it in a drawer; where the sound of silence suddenly becomes compelling.

Love at First Sight  was in that third category, occasionally slipping into the fourth. As good as the narration is, I think it is a book better experienced in print. In audio format, the pacing is glacial. The first 200 minutes of listening (I counted) covered only the first day and, apart from the two main characters, Natalie and Dade, having a brief meeting, nothing actually happened.

Natalie McLeary lives in Cupid, Texas, the site of a cave wherein is the “Cupid Stalagmite”. In the 1800s, someone wrote a letter to Cupid and left it at the stalagmite asking for assistance with their love life. It worked and ever since, people have been writing to Cupid and the town’s economy is largely based on the tourism it generates. Natalie has a large and loving family but her parents were killed in a plane crash when she was nine. Natalie herself had a serious leg injury (in the same accident) that required many surgeries. She walks with a limp and uses an ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) to assist mobility. I didn’t love the way disability was treated in the book for the most part. She has a limp but she is a capable beautiful woman and while she can’t wear high heels with comfort, she is otherwise active and healthy. I felt the text was trying to persuade me to feel sorry for her and, although I certainly felt sympathy for her experiences as a child (that part of the book was particularly moving), I didn’t feel that way for the 29 year-old woman. On the other hand, it is Natalie who does the rescuing in the book so I have to applaud the girl power.

Dade Vega is a former Navy SEAL who was medically discharged after a head injury. His only close friend is Red, his foster brother and former SEAL buddy. Red, who has been boarding at Natalie’s Bed and Breakfast, goes missing. This brings Dade to town and into Natalie’s sphere. He’s a rolling stone but, as the title suggests, both are struck by love at the first sight of each other when Natalie is riding her bicycle into town. They spend a lot of time thinking that their feelings could not possibly be real but, as they work together to try and solve the mystery of Red’s disappearance, it becomes clear that the Cupid’s arrow has stuck fast.

There is only one sex scene and I’m pretty sure the lengthy foreplay was depicted in real time. It says something when I’m bored during a love scene. But, bored I was.

When I’m not loving an audiobook, it can be difficult to judge the narration separately. If the story is amazing and the narrator is amazing, that’s easy. If the story is great but the narration does not appeal, I can separate that out too. But the other way around is more difficult. The narration by C.J. Critt is very good here. Unfortunately, the pacing of the story was far too slow for me. It is the sort of book I would largely skim in print but I cannot do that with an audiobook. I do not think the narration was too slow; if the text were more exciting, I would have been quite happy with the speed of Ms. Critt’s performance. Her male voices are quite deep and distinct from one another and her narrative voice is very pleasing to the ear as well. As I said earlier, the scene where Natalie remembers the plane crash which killed her parents was particularly moving and part of that was the skill of the narration.

There will be listeners who do not mind a slower paced story or for whom this will be just the ticket. But I found myself wanting them to just get on with it already. Things just moved too slowly to keep me engaged.

I’d definitely pick up another audiobook narrated by C.J. Critt – she sounded so comfortable with the text and the delivery was smooth and skilled. But I’m not so sure I’ll be listening to the next Cupid book.

Kaetrin

Narration: B

Book Content:  C-

Steam Factor:  Glad I had my earbuds in (but at the tame end)

Violence:  Minimal

Genre:  Contemporary, small town

Publisher:  Harper Audio

Love at First Sight was provided to AudioGals for review by Harper Audio.