Suddenly One Summer by Julie James

Narrated by Karen White

Suddenly One Summer is another story in the Julie James world of young professionals in Chicago. Victoria Slade is a single, successful 30-something attorney with her own practice in family law, divorce and custody settlements making up the bulk of her practice. The story starts with Victoria experiencing a burglary when she’s at home, and while she’s holed up in her closet with a 911 operator on the line, she has a panic attack and passes out. Unable to live in this home afterward, she buys a new place that won’t be ready for three months, so she takes a temporary rental.

Victoria’s new next door neighbor appears to be a serious womanizer – she first sees him at a neighborhood bar where he seems to be entertaining an enthusiastic group of young women. When the party moves back to his place, Victoria learns the hard way that the sound-proofing between their homes is non-existent, so rather than listen to them partying – and more – she sleeps in the living room. Another encounter or two with random, attractive women coming from and going to his apartment seals her opinion: he’s definitely a player. Her feelings are exacerbated by her inability to sleep since the burglary, all of which makes her a little cranky.

James’ fans will remember Ford Dixon as a secondary character in Love Irresistibly. He is an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune. While at a neighborhood bar, he spies an attractive woman who turns out to be his new neighbor, Victoria. He is just about to introduce himself when the nearby bachelorette party invites him and his friends to their table; while he’s distracted, Victoria leaves the bar. His friends offer up his nearby apartment to the bachelorettes to continue the fun, and he’s stuck with a drunk young woman crying all over him about her boyfriend. He also has a best friend who is a woman – Brooke from Love Irresistibly – as well as a sister who is a single mom whose baby daddy skipped out on her after their drunken one night stand, and all of these women appear at his apartment regularly.

Once Ford and Victoria finally meet face to face, Victoria is outraged for all womanhood that men like him exist – until she eventually learns the truth about the women in his life. It turns out that both of them have serious, deep-rooted commitment issues, but the chemistry is strong between them and eventually they give in to lust, if just for a summer fling.

Ford is determined to help his sister locate the deadbeat dad named Peter Sutton who left her pregnant, and make him pay, and Victoria offers her pro bono legal representation. Since he’s an investigative journalist, they agree that he can do the legwork to find Sutton. This sets up the bulk of the action in the story, as he enlists Victoria’s help in executing the mission. She knocks on doors and gives a story to the man named Peter Sutton (of whom there are eleven), while Ford takes a photo from the street and texts it to his sister for identification.

The story is just ever so slightly darker than other James’ books in that she gives a nod to deeper issues, mainly Victoria’s panic disorder. Victoria starts therapy and eventually realizes that the panic attack was triggered by the burglary but was rooted in her childhood, where her parents turned her life upside down by their divorce and her mother’s suicide attempt. That she also sees the worst in people in divorce court just cements her notion that marriage is a recipe for unhappiness. Ford also faces some challenges: his alcoholic father has recently died, so he is left grieving but also conflicted because of all the disappointments of his father’s associated mood shifts. Even with these weighty issues, the dialogue is still as sassy and saucy as ever, as two intelligent protagonists go toe to toe with words as their weapons. Victoria’s biggest vulnerability is her inability to let people in – she knows she is strong and can take care of herself, so she cannot admit that it isn’t a weakness to ask for help. Ford isn’t that different from the typical, single man in his thirties – there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for him to leave bachelorhood behind. The secondary story of Ford’s sister and the one-night-stand baby daddy is a good counterpoint with an unexpected, emotional twist.

Karen White’s narration embodies all of the characters perfectly, as usual, giving distinct voice to both men and women, so that it’s easy to distinguish all the characters and follow the story. Her pacing is so natural that she could be making up the story as she goes – very relaxed and clear. OK, there was one time near the end that she said “Ryan” when I thought it should have been Victoria’s best friend Rachel, but I don’t have the print book so I’m not sure what she meant – was that Rachel’s last name? A typo? Other than that, her narration was as wonderful as ever, catching and delivering the dry humor as well as the pathos perfectly. She evokes the male characters with a slightly lower pitch, but also uses timbre and accents to differentiate them not just from the females but from each other, as there are several scenes with Ford and his two male best friends. And she delivers the love scenes with enough emotion that you sense the heat – but not so much that you feel like a voyeur!

Overall, I enjoyed it. The story relies on scenes that are not actually what they appear, so that conclusions are being jumped to constantly, and both protagonists judge the other on mistaken observations – a twist on the Big Misunderstanding trope. A supposed womanizer is actually with a life-long female friend, for instance, and a woman wearing the same clothes as yesterday does not necessarily imply she slept with another man. I found Victoria to be a little too judgy for me, not as likeable as other James heroines, even through the filter of her backstory and subsequent disorder. Still, it’s highly recommended for all Julie James’ fans and anyone looking for an entertaining contemporary romance.

Melinda

Narration: A

Book Content: A-

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: None

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Tantor Audio