Coming Home by Mariah Stewart

Narrated by Xe Sands

Former FBI agent Grady Shields has been living the life of a recluse since his wife’s death some years before the novel starts. He comes to St. Dennis in Maryland to attend his sister’s wedding, and meets Vanessa Keaton, his sister’s new sister-in-law. Vanessa moved to St. Dennis a few years before, running from a bad marriage and a not-great relationship with her flighty mother. It’s romance: boy meets girl, and sparks fly.

If only it were that simple. Coming Home is contemporary romance with a splash of suspense – who burglarized Vanessa’s upscale boutique, Bling, during the wedding? Who bashed in Grady’s rental car windows? Who could possibly have broken into Vanessa’s house and left a package containing the one item stolen from Bling?

Yeah, yeah, it’s not really that suspenseful, given all the verbal clues in the exposition. I had a hard time rating it because if I were just to go with the left brain checklist, I’d say: check: grammar was correct; check, plotline interesting enough; check, relationship plausible; check, writing was ok. But my right brain and my gut kept screaming, stop with all the detail in the prose! I mean, we learned what the mayor’s ex-husband took in his coffee, and he was never even part of the action. Some detail is good but I felt like I was in on A Day in the Life of Vanessa Keaton, with a narrator detailing her every move. The suspense was too easy to figure out; the resolution way too neat and tidy. More than that – all the characters were too damn reasonable and awfully wise. Vanessa and Grady each managed to have a lot of great advice for each other to get over their previous relationships. [roll eyes]

Xe Sands’ narration was good – it was better than good, really. She has a wonderful low range for men, and her Hal (not the hero) was a great, laid back, reasonable and wise fellow, for all that he seemed to still carry a torch for Vanessa’s flighty mother. She gave an older female character, Grace, the expected wavering, elderly voice. But hey, where did that odd plotline about Grace and Alice come from? I digress – narration couldn’t make the story more fetching, I’m afraid.

In conclusion – the story was uninspired, with some odd, left-field details tucked in amongst the exceedingly reasonable and remarkably wise characters in an unsuspenseful plot, and was narrated well.

Melinda


Narration: A

Book Content: C

Steam Factor: just enough detail that I was Glad I Had My Earbuds In

Violence: Fighting and reference to domestic violence, but not in real time

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Tantor Audio

 

 

 

Coming Home was provided to AudioGals for review by Tantor Audio.

2 thoughts on “Coming Home by Mariah Stewart

  1. I have listened to the whole series. Xe Sands is great in all of them, but the story content is a bit lacking in all of them–the second and the third, Home Again and Almost Home, are a bit better for content, but the driving force behind my listening to all five was Xe Sands. I was able to check them all out on CD at the local library, but I would have to say after listening to the content in general I would not deem them “credit worthy” at Audible.

    Kelley

    1. I too started Coming Home to hear Xe Sands’ narration as Stewart was unknown to me. However, I didn’t make it more than a couple of hours before signing off to listen to another book. It wasn’t that it was all that bad. It just didn’t hold my interest when I had a few other audios I knew would prove great listens waiting on my iPod.

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