Narrated by Eric G. Dove, Laurie West, and Kristin Watson Heintz
Rock star romances seem to be pretty popular these days. Up until recently, I’d never read one, but decided Wicked White might be a good place to start. It was short, and I love almost anything read by Eric G. Dove.
Ace White is living what most people would swear is his dream life. He’s the lead singer of a wildly popular new band. Any woman he wants is his for the asking. He has more money than he ever thought possible. And yet, Ace knows something is missing. He wants people to care about him for himself, not just his money or celebrity status. The music he’s performing doesn’t fit him at all. He wants to perform music he connects with, but that can’t happen yet. Ace is locked into a contract that is sucking the life right out of him. He wants out.
Then, the woman who raised him is found near death in her home. Ace is desperate to be with her. Sarah is the closest thing he ever had to a mother. Despite the wishes of his manager and band mates, Ace runs out in the middle of a sold out tour. He’s done with it all. He doesn’t care about the consequences. He’s had enough, and he can’t see past that undeniable fact.
How do you disappear when the world is familiar with your face? Is it possible to hide when the police and the media have launched a nationwide search? Ace is looking for a place to do just that, and he finds it in a small town in Ohio.
Iris Easton’s life has been far from easy. Her mother walked out on her when she was only six, leaving Iris in the care of her grandmother. Now, her grandma is dead, and Iris is struggling to keep the trailer park she owns out of the hands of the state. She once dreamed of performing on Broadway, but she’s not sure she’ll be able to accomplish that now. Then, a mysterious man moves in next door to her, and Iris begins to want things she never even considered before now.
Ace and Iris are a pretty unlikely couple. He’s a rock star, and she’s an aspiring Broadway star. She grew up in a loving home, while he was in and out of various foster homes. Their lives are worlds apart, but a connection is forged. They fall in love.
Parts of Wicked White were kind of implausible. For example, Ace doesn’t tell Iris that he’s Ace White, the missing rock star. Iris, who realizes Ace is hiding something, does some poking around online, finds out who he really is, and accepts it without seeming to care the slightest bit. When Ace finally confesses, she isn’t angry. She doesn’t ask questions. She just accepts everything he says and decides to run away with him if it turns out to be necessary. I found this pretty hard to swallow. It didn’t seem like a realistic response.
Normally, I’m a huge fan of narrator Eric G. Dove. His performance here was good, but not one of his best. Mr. Dove sounds much older than the twenty-five-year-old Ace. This was difficult to shrug off, since nearly half the book is told from Ace’s point of view. It might have made more sense for a different narrator to be chosen.
Mr. Dove’s depictions of Iris and the rest of the cast were quite good. There were a few times when he got pretty close to falsetto when speaking for Iris, but, for the most part, he created very believable character voices. I admire Mr. Dove’s ability to portray the senior citizens in a way that doesn’t sound cartoonish. I’ve heard a lot of subpar performances that include elderly characters who don’t sound at all credulous.
Wicked White seems to be Laurie West’s first audiobook. She read the parts of the book that are told from Iris’s point of view. Her voice is light, and this worked well for the most part. Male voices were difficult for Ms. West. Sometimes, she deepened her voice too much, but I suspect this is something she can work on. Her female voices are wonderfully distinct, and I never had to rely on dialogue tags.
Unfortunately, Kristin Watson Heintz doesn’t get a lot of narrating time her. She reads parts of the book that are told from the point of view of a very pushy news reporter. These were performed adequately, but they were very, very short. I didn’t feel like I experienced enough true narration to grade her performance appropriately.
If you’re a fan of romances featuring rock stars, you might enjoy Wicked White. I would not, however, recommend this as a starting place. The writing is a little choppy, and the narration could have been better.
Shannon
Narration: Eric G. Dove: C+, Laurie West: B
Book Content: C
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence Rating: Fighting
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Wicked White was provided to AudioGals by Brilliance Audio for a review.
[jwl-utmce-widget id=32435]This is a nice long sound sample from Kindle Love Stories – it is read by the above narrators.
