Narrated by Brittany Pressley
Brown-Eyed Girl is the long awaited fourth and final book in Lisa Kleypas’ Travis Family series and Joe Travis finally gets his HEA. One of my very favourite audiobooks is Blue-Eyed Devil, the second book in the series and I therefore had very high hopes indeed for Brown-Eyed Girl.
Photographer Joe Travis meets wedding planner Avery Crosslin at a friend’s wedding. He is immediately smitten by Avery and coaxes and cajoles Avery into dancing with him near the end of the reception (in an out of the way corner because it is just not done for the wedding planner to behave like a wedding guest). Heated kisses at the doorstep of the guesthouse where Avery is spending the night lead her to invite him in for much more. However, what Joe thinks is the beginning of a beautiful relationship, Avery considers a one night stand.
Avery, 26, had a difficult childhood. Her father, Eli, was a womaniser who couldn’t stick to one woman or one family. He left a trail of women and children behind and Avery was one of them.
Three years before the book begins, Avery was jilted on her wedding day. She and Brian had been together for four years but on the day they were to be married, he phoned her to say he couldn’t go through with it and he wasn’t sure he had ever loved her. Avery has therefore sworn off love and romance for herself. After the example her father provided and her own experience with Brian, Avery has decided that love is a fool’s game.
Why then pursue a career in wedding planning you may ask? It’s a question I asked. Even Joe asked it. Avery’s answer was unconvincing to say the least. In the end, I put it down to the author having to create a conflict to keep the protagonists apart.
Joe is very keen to pursue a relationship with Avery and overcomes her reluctance with charm, kindness and, occasionally, by riding roughshod over her stated desires. I knew that Avery wanted a relationship with Joe even though she wasn’t admitting it to anyone so I was okay with it, but I think there was a bit of a plot failure here (see above paragraph). The conflict just wasn’t very convincing.
Once Avery gives in and decides to date Joe, things are easy between them. They fit together very well. He respects her talents, loves her body and encourages her career goals – even when it might cost him personally. Avery is a great support to Joe and is enveloped into the Travis family without a ripple.
When Avery has a chance to move back to beloved New York, she has to make a big decision – the dream job? Or Joe (and the other Travises) and her sister Sofia in Houston? (This is set up very early in the piece so is not, I think, a spoiler.)
The story doesn’t really cover new ground romance-wise and as I mentioned above, some of the plotting is thin and clunky. However, there is a charm to the way Avery and Joe interact and there was even a sweet secondary romance as well. It was also nice to catch up with the other Travis family members (and Hardy Cates of course because HARDY CATES!). There was of course, and unfortunately, not enough Hardy Cates in the book, but one can’t have everything. ;)
Brown-Eyed Girl didn’t have the angst of Blue-Eyed Devil and the romantic payoff therefore wasn’t as big. Joe is nice enough but he’s not called upon to do anything particularly heroic in the story so I did no swooning. I think I can be a bit more forgiving of story issues in an audiobook where the narration is good however, so I was able to enjoy it for what it was. But I think I’d have done a lot of skimming in print.
Brittany Pressley’s performance was good – her male voices weren’t particularly deep but they were sufficiently different from the female characters and, for the most part, there was no mystery about who was who. There were, however, a few times where I felt the narrator became confused about who was speaking and as a consequence, so did I. There were times when Joe’s voice was used for Avery’s lines and vice versa. As there were no dialogue tags in these sections, I had to put it together from context alone. This did not happen often but I did notice it.
Perhaps my biggest query with the narration was the characterisation of Sofia, Avery’s sister. Sofia is Eli’s daughter as well, but she and Avery have different mothers. They only met as adults when Eli was sick in hospital and they bonded and became very close – Avery and Sofia run the wedding planning business together. Sofia’s mother is of Mexican heritage and Sofia was raised in San Antonio in the bosom of a large and loving Mexican family. Ms. Pressley portrayed Sofia with a voice which sounded like Sofia Vergara (from Modern Family) and not Gina Rodriguez (from Jane the Virgin). Why Sofia had such a strong accent was beyond me. She was raised in San Antonio! I felt fairly confident that Sofia would be able to say “you” without making the hard “J” sound but that’s not how she was presented.
Of course, I haven’t seen the text. Perhaps the text indicates this is how she was intended to sound? If so, that is an issue with the writing and not the narration. There was an instance in the text where Sofia is fondly laughed at for saying “payamas” instead of “pajamas”.
I think the accent was pretty stereotypical and my feeling is that Latina women might well find that stereotype offensive. The advantage was that it was very easy to tell Avery and Sofia apart, but I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason for her to be given such a strong accent.
Otherwise, Ms. Pressley had a pleasant voice and delivered well in terms of pacing and tone, nailing the humour and the banter between the various characters and the smouldering chemistry between Avery and Joe. All in all, I think I made the right choice in consuming this one via audiobook.
[section label=’Audiobook Information’ anchor=’Audiobook Information’]
Kaetrin
AUDIOBOOK INFORMATION
TITLE: Brown-Eyed Girl
AUTHOR: Lisa Kleypas
NARRATED BY: Brittany Pressley
GENRE: Contemporary Romance
STEAM FACTOR: Glad I had my earbuds in
REVIEWER: Kaetrin [button type=’link’ link=’http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013PVONL2/?tag=audiogalsnet-20′ size=’btn-lg’ variation=’btn-default’ target=’blank’]Buy Brown-Eyed Girl by Lisa Kleypas on Amazon[/button]
I’m partway through and I totally agree with you about Sofia’s accent. I’m from Houston and my bilingual friends and co-workers who were raised stateside don’t have accents like that, so I am also perplexed by her choice of accent for Sofia. I’m a little perplexed at how strong an accent she gives the Travis boys too – really, that is more of a small-town-Texas accent than one spoken by the 1-percenters living in River Oaks (extremely exclusive and real neighborhood where the fictional Travis family lives).
Now that I’ve finished, I do think Kleypas gave a lot of contextual cues that she wrote Sofia to be ESL (English as a Second Language). Not just the mispronounced words, but also the phrases in Spanish as though that came easier to her, and the misuse/forgetting of the English word or phrase all point to her not being as fluent in English and therefore possibly having a pronounced accent. I don’t agree with this portrayal – a child raised from birth in San Antonio, even by a Spanish-only speaker, would most likely speak fluent English without a pronounced Mexican accent.
I think the narrator was just following those cues. It might have sounded odd to have her with no accent, and say pi-yamas and spout Spanish when excited.