Don’t Want To Miss A Thing by Jill Mansell

Don't Want to Miss a ThingNarrated by Alison Larkin

Confession: I’ve never read or listened to a Jill Mansell book before. When I took to Twitter to ask my friends whether I’d like Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, I was assured that there was a HEA and it would be worth my time. The author, to my vast amusement, also tweeted me assuring me that of course I’d love the book. :P

As it happens, I did enjoy it. I find that I can be more adventurous in audio format than in print. I tend to stick to romance in print/digital but I can branch out a bit more when listening. This isn’t a traditional romance – there’s a HEA make no mistake. In fact, there are a number of them but the story doesn’t focus solely or mainly on one romantic pairing.

When Dexter’s sister dies leaving him the guardian of her baby daughter, Delphie, his entire life is turned upside down. He was a hedge fund manager, working all hours, playing hard when he wasn’t working, and he had a revolving door of women. I never got the impression he was a cheater – he was a one-at-a-time kind of guy but, with his good looks, charm, and money, he did leave a lot of disappointed women in his dust. It takes a while for Dex to come to grips with things but he is so in love with his niece that he decides he needs to change his life. And, to his credit, while he has the occasional pang (don’t we all Dex), he embraces those changes and never seriously looks back.

Shortly before his sister’s death, Dex purchased a “cottage” (which sounded like a house to me) in rural Briarwood. He moves from London to Briarwood to raise Delphie. He’s fortunate that he has the funds to take off work for a few years and focus on child-rearing. Molly is Dex’s next door neighbour. They become great friends and we listeners know that there is mutual attraction, but the timing never seems right. Also, Molly is wary of being just another notch on Dex’s bedpost and is reluctant to ruin the friendship for a fling.

The other residents of Briarwood have a large part to play in Don’t Want To Miss A Thing and there are… let me count them… three other romantic storylines, a trouble marriage, and a troubled teen story all packed into the book.

There was a kind of warm good humour to the story and, apart from some jokes which fell flat for me regarding cross-dressing and lesbianism (both of which fundamentally mistake the nature of each), I found the book both easy and enjoyable. In print, for me, it would have been a bit lacking in the romance department – not because the sex was sparse and closed door but because for most of the book, Dex and Molly are really just good friends, including a lengthy stretch when they are dating other people. But, in audio, I was able to relax and enjoy the journey.

It was a bit of a shock to hear Alison Larkin narrating a contemporary. I have listened to a few of her performances (and for some reason, she has appeared on my iPod three times in the last six or so books so I feel quite familiar now) but they have all been historical stories (one was a mystery with a dash of romance set in the 1920s, the others were Regency or Georgian). In my head, I had associated her with an entirely different subgenre than contemporary women’s fiction (and yes, I do loathe that term). For a while, I wondered therefore, whether my issue with her voicing of Dexter was just me because he sounded like he belonged in a book set in 1817 a lot of the time, no matter that his words were modern. But in the end, I think that the characterisation was just a little off. He was described in the text as charming, affable, good humoured, and not at all stuck-up but he came across as kind of priggish (yet not as much as Vince who actually was a priggish character). Dex was actually a really nice guy – just a bit of a womaniser who didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. Some of his dialogue (maybe even a lot of his dialogue) was voiced as quite straight-laced and uptight, but the words themselves and his character were not.

I’ve said before that Ms. Larkin sometimes speeds up her sentences to convey a ramping up of tension or a particular character trait. I’ve found it to be a bit hit or miss. There are times when it is appropriate and exactly right for the scene or person doing the talking, but there are other times when it feels out of the blue and jarring. Here, for the most part, she was sparing with this style and it mostly worked very well.

There were various English accents used in the narration and I very much liked the way Ms. Larkin differentiated the characters utilizing pitch and accents – each was performed distinctly and, apart from Dex, I thought they worked well.

Delphie was depicted mostly with baby noises and Ms. Larkin did a brilliant job with that as well. Honestly, they’re probably the best I’ve ever heard.

However, when a character who was not a baby made a strange noise – a squeal, a scream, or an angry Gah! – well, let’s just say those utterances felt fake and I didn’t care for them (fortunately, they didn’t occur often).

Overall, I would have given the narration a B but because Dex was the main character and I had some issues with his portrayal, I dropped it to a B-.

Kaetrin


Narration:  B-

Book Content:  B

Steam Factor:  You can play it out loud

Violence:  Minimal

Genre:  Women’s Fiction (I do not like this term)/ Contemporary Romance

Publisher:  Tantor Audio

 

Don’t Want to Miss a Thing was provided to AudioGals for review by Tantor Audio.

7 thoughts on “Don’t Want To Miss A Thing by Jill Mansell

  1. I love Jill Mansell. I have most of her books in print and in e-format. Don’t Want to Miss a Thing was a wonderful story to read in print….I loved it. The audio was a DNF . I felt very let down. :(

    To the Moon and Back is my favorite Mansell…..I pray they find another narrator….fingers crossed.

    1. I’m curious Mel – what about the narration didn’t work for you? I hear that Larkin is hit or miss in many cases – was it something in particular you didn’t like or are you just not a Larkin fan?

      1. Not a fan. It was her portrayal of Dex (whom I loved in print) and the sound effects. Also the speed issue is something that has bothered me in the regencies.

        1. Fair enough. I did think her Dex was too stuffy but narrator performance is very much personal taste. Some of the narrators who don’t work for me at all are favourites of my fellow reviewers here.

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