Narrated by Amy Landon & Stephen Graybill
I am an animal lover, so a book set on an animal rescue farm looked right up my alley. All Roads Lead to You is the third book in the Stay series but it stands alone well.
Harper Bishop is the last single Bishop sibling standing. She’s fairly convinced that a HEA isn’t in the cards for her but for the most part she’s okay with it. She is passionate about the animals she rescues, particularly the horses and she’s content with her fairly solitary life, getting plenty of affection from her beloved animals and with her family close for company when she needs it.
Aidan O’Connor is an Irish horse trainer who left Ireland under somewhat mysterious and unhappy circumstances and who is trying to find just the right horse to train in the USA so he can build a reputation there and then return to Ireland a winner.
One of Harper’s rescue horses is Phoenix, a thoroughbred horse who seems born to race. Only, Phoenix was badly abused by his former owners and is very antisocial. He doesn’t like many people and he doesn’t like being around other animals. Exactly how he could successfully race given that is unclear to her, but Harper is determined to try.
When Aidan stays at the Inn on the Bishop family farm, he meets both Harper and Phoenix and is instantly smitten by both of them. Aidan ends up training Phoenix and thus he and Harper spend a lot of time in close proximity. Their simmering attraction builds slowly over the months they work together until at last (and of course – this is a romance novel after all) they give in to it.
Aidan has always intended to return to Ireland. He’s presented as a wanderer. Harper is rooted solidly on her farm and has no desire to leave. It’s obvious that for them to have a HEA one of them is going to have to change.
There is a lot in the book about animals, horses and racing. I admit horses were never my thing. I’m a dog person. I found myself a little bored at times by the details of running the farm and impatient to get to the romance part. I was, however, quite enamoured of Captain Hoof (I’ll let listeners find out exactly who he is for themselves).
The first half of the novel moves fairly slowly with the romance definitely secondary to training Phoenix. The book got a lot more interesting to me once Aidan and Harper gave in to their attraction.
The jockey Aidan gets to ride Phoenix is named Elmo. His ethnicity was unclear to me – if it was specified in the book, I missed it. He is described as having almond shaped eyes with a slight slant but he was voiced with a sometimes middle Eastern and sometimes Italian(?) accent so I really don’t know. I was a little concerned about the representation however because he was portrayed as very mystical and weird in ways that seemed to be linked to his ethnicity. That said, maybe he’s actually from somewhere in the US and he’s white in which case the accents used were very strange indeed but the representation was fine? [insert shrug emoji here]
Harper was severely bullied at school and this has led to her being a loner and wanting mainly to keep to animal company rather than human. She also lacks confidence about her personal attractiveness, feeling too tall and unlovable. I was a little confused as to how Harper could have been so badly bullied without her siblings knowing about it. I haven’t read the earlier two books, but the siblings are fairly close in age and they all seem to have attended the same school. If Harper was being bullied by “the whole school” surely her brother and sister would have and known??
Aidan has a secret he keeps from Harper for too long (of course) but the black moment isn’t quite as I had been expecting and I was grateful for that.
The narration was a bit of a mixed bag.
Amy Landon read the sections from Harper’s point of view. I found her depiction of Harper and most of the rest of the cast to be pretty good, but I didn’t love the way she voiced Aidan. Her Irish accent was a bit hit and miss – sometimes it was very good, other times it was really not. Also, the vocal tone she gave him didn’t work for me.
Stephen Graybill’s Irish accent was far superior and more consistent. He did a reasonable job with the female character voices as well. However, every now and then he’d insert an unnecessary vocal pause which seemed a little odd. For example, in written text, something might appear such as “Nice to meet you, Harper.” In this example, Mr. Graybill would say: “Nice to meet you [wait a beat] Harper” which made it sound kind of like he didn’t believe the Harper was actually her name. It’s a case when a comma doesn’t actually mean a pause.
I’ve already spoken about Elmo’s depiction which was problematic from both narrators.
However, Ms. Landon and Mr. Graybill both put good tension and emotion into their performances so there were things to enjoy as well.
All Roads Lead to You had elements of many things I love in romance but the execution here was at times a little boring and it took until the second half of the book for me to really get into it.
Kaetrin
Buy All Roads Lead to You by Jennifer Probst on Amazon
