Narrated by Loretta Rawlins and Nicholas Tecosky
One of my biggest complaints about the New Adult genre is the sameness of the stories. If You Stay, Book 1 in the Beautifully Broken series, is a prime example of another author retelling the same old story, putting only the slightest of spins on it in an attempt to make it stand out from the rest.
Pax Tate is twenty-four and content to live his life as a druggie and womanizer. Since the death of his mother when Pax was seven, there has been an emptiness in his life that nothing can fill. Now, he pretends not to feel it. Drugs and women make it possible. He is rich, so has no need to worry about normal things like getting a job.
Mila Hill is a struggling artist who is as sweet as Pax is jaded. She lost her parents in a car accident several years before the story opens, and she still grieves their loss. They didn’t have a perfect marriage, but they loved each other and their two daughters very much. Mila believes love is possible for everyone, if only the right person comes along.
Mila and Pax meet when he almost overdoses, and Mila saves his life by calling an ambulance. After that, she is haunted by thoughts of him, and stops by the hospital to make sure he survived. Pax feels drawn to Mila, but knows she’s far too good for someone like him. Even so, he decides to see where things might lead.
I had trouble with both protagonists. Mila seems way too naive for someone of twenty-three. She experiences what she considers to be a great revelation, but turns out to be something most people learn pretty early on in life. I’m not sure what accounts for Mila’s sheltered existence, as the author didn’t explain it.
Logically, I understand that everyone has different ways of coping with trauma. However, this doesn’t mean I have to like certain things in my reading. Pax uses women, plying them with drugs so they’ll have sex with him. He doesn’t take time to think about these women as people. Then, he meets Mila, and he’s determined to change. This is definitely a good thing, but that kind of change takes time, and shouldn’t be done for the sake of anyone but the person who is doing the changing. In Pax’s case, he seemed to be changing to please Mila, not because he felt the need to become a better person.
Both Loretta Rawlins and Nicholas Tecosky were first-time narrators for me. While each performed well enough, nothing really stood out about their narration. Both were able to create believable characters. Ms. Rawlins sounded a little older than Mila’s character, but that didn’t detract too much from the listening experience.
There aren’t very many secondary characters in If You Stay. This made it easy for both narrators to make everyone easily distinguishable. Having said that, there were times when Ms. Rawlins seemed to have difficulty with Mila and her older sister Madison. If the two of them were conversing, I had to pay close attention to the dialogue tags as well as the context to ensure I knew who was speaking. Sometimes, Ms. Rawlins seemed to forget what Madison was supposed to sound like, causing her to sound a lot more like Mila than she usually did.
Mr. Tecosky’s performance was the stronger of the two, but only because he managed to stay in character for the entire book. Other than that small perk, his performance was just average.
So, if you enjoy most New Adult titles, If You Stay might be worth a listen. However, if you’re looking for something that will really stand out, this isn’t the book for you. Everything about it screamed average to me.
Shannon
Narration: Nicholas Tecosky – B- and Loretta Rawlins – C
Book Content: C-
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence: Violence:
Genre: New Adult
Publisher: Hachette Audio
If You Stay was provided to AudioGals by Hachette Audio for review.
