Narrated by Anna Fields
A Vintage Review – audiobook published 2007, review from 2012
Anyone who is a fan of the Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Chicago Stars series as performed by Kate Fleming/Anna Fields can probably hear Fleming’s voice as she says “read by Anna Fields” at the beginning of every narration. The combination of these two incredible women – Phillips and Fleming – makes for one of the funniest, most fantastical and still realistic, touching and romantic contemporary series ever recorded.
Jane Darlington is a 30-something professor, a former child prodigy who grew up feeling freakish and geeky. She wants to have a baby and raise it by herself – but there will be no sperm bank for her. She wants the biological sperm donor to be her complete opposite – good looking but stupid – to guarantee a normal life. She picks the man she figures is just a dumb jock – Chicago Stars quarterback Cal Bonner – off a TV screen where he’s just shown the world how stupid he really is by using the word “ain’t”.
In a fantasy twist only SEP can pull off, Jane’s neighbor manages to introduce the two – and the game is on. Cal’s not as dumb as he looks – he’s a summa cum laude graduate with a highly competitive nature and a strong moral code, and the only way any woman is going to bring his child into the world is as his wife.
The first time I listened to Nobody’s Baby But Mine, I admit I was a little horrified – tricking a man into becoming a sperm donor just doesn’t seem an appropriate subject of romantic comedy. In fact, it’s so un-PC that I know someone is going to pipe up about it – someone always does. But now that I’ve done at least 12 re-listens to the series, I can honestly say that it’s so outrageous, so hysterical, so laugh-out-loud that I just want to back up and re-listen to the seduction scenes all over again. It ain’t real life, people, it’s comedy!
Kate Fleming’s incredible gift of voice acting is something I’m pretty sure all narrators strive to emulate. She gives distinct, natural voices to all her characters, even children. She reads the narrative as though telling you a story around a campfire – I never notice any repetitive vocal patterns, any bizarre pronunciations. She’s not perfect – when she gives Michigan-bred Kevin Tucker, the hero of This Heart of Mine, a Texas accent in Match Me If You Can, I wince every time! But the peccadillos of the occasional wrong word or name never pull me out of the story when she’s spinning a yarn just for me, right in my ears.
I like to do a Stars marathon at least once a year to remind myself why I love to listen to romance. At the very end of Jane and Cal’s story, Cal produces the pink bow Jane wore when she came into his life – it’s one of romance writing’s most touching and heart-felt gestures from a hero. And that, my friends, is why I love to listen to romance.
Melinda
Buy Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips on Amazon
