What I Love About You by Rachel Gibson

What I Love About You 240Narrated by Emma Bates

Natalie Cooper was prom queen and cheerleader and married to her high school boyfriend, the football jock, in a too-perfect-to-be-true-love story. Now, several years later, he’s the ex, in prison, serving time for defrauding people of their life savings and she’s a single mom in one of Gibson’s best fictional small towns, Truly, Idaho. Natalie meets her new next-door neighbor, Blake Junger, while he’s telling 5-year-old Charlotte, “I shit bigger than you”. Yeah, he’s a keeper, right?

Yeah, he is a keeper, actually! What I Love About You is a sequel to Gibson’s Run to You, which featured Blake’s identical twin brother, Beau. It works well as a stand-alone, but in Run to You, Beau was already worried about Blake’s potential PTSD, and this book opens with Blake’s struggle with alcohol. He’s taking a breather from his job as military-level security to face his demons: Johnnie Walker and the recurring flashbacks from the war. In puro Gibson style, Blake wonders how someone with his high-level, Navy SEAL training keeps getting bested by a 5-year-old who manages to both sneak up on him and sneak into his heart, both while he’s not looking.

There’s no thread of suspense – this is boy-meets-girl and their struggles. Natalie’s ex gets out of prison and, along with his family, tries to pressure Natalie into reconsidering their relationship, while Blake battles his own personal evil spirits. Told with humor and poignancy, Gibson works both the reader and her characters over pretty well, and brings them to a satisfying conclusion. Well, almost satisfying – truth be told, I wanted Blake to grovel a little bit more, but with cute Notable Pet dog, Sparky, to bridge the abyss, I was happy. I love the way Gibson spins a story that has you laughing and crying and cheering on her characters.

The book is narrated by Emma Bates, who also narrated an earlier Gibson, Truly Madly Yours. I liked Bates better in this book although I still have a quibble with her deadpan, almost monotone narrative delivery. Her characters are good and generally easy to tell apart, but a few times I got confused when she used her female register for Blake or a deeper tone for Natalie, since there wasn’t a large pitch or even tone change between them. Her dialog delivery is animated and the acting is good when they are speaking. She also did a good job voicing 5-year-old Charlotte, who is struggling with the letter R and therefore pronounces the puppy’s name “Spawky” instead of Sparky. She even got to speak for Sparky himself a couple of times, which is always fun!

 

Melinda


Narration: B-

Book Content: A

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Fighting (not between characters but as part of Blake’s job)

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Harper Audio