Narrated by Laura Hicks
Barbara Delinsky’s recent voice is often closer to women’s fiction than romance. In Coast Road, the heroine Rachel, a divorced mom of 2 teenaged girls, is in a coma for 16 days after a car accident. Her ex-husband Jack comes to take care of the girls. Jack never really stopped loving Rachel – he always felt she left him. He sits by Rachel’s side in the hospital as much as possible, talking to her, urging and encouraging her to come out of the coma. We learn Rachel’s POV from a busybody friend who tells Jack some of what Rachel has revealed to her since the divorce – that Rachel felt abandoned and stifled in the city, living in the shadow of Jack’s work.
Narrator Laura Hicks does a manageable job with the story. Her various women’s and girls’ character voices are good and distinct. Her male voices are not as satisfying – she is a little inconsistent with pitch, sometimes making them sound masculine, and sometimes using her regular voice. Much of the story is told from Jack’s voice and POV, and having him sometimes sound male and sometimes not can be jarring. So much of his dialog is with the girls that it’s usually easy enough to tell who is speaking. Her regular narration is good – she keeps the story moving forward. I liked her voice acting better in Linda Howard’s Mr. Perfect – she sounds a little younger, which better portrays the two protagonists in that book. Rachel and Jack are perhaps a little older, and Rachel’s friends and neighbors are all ages.
The story is romance, even if the hero and heroine are separated by a coma for much of the book. It’s an interesting way to showcase a divorced couple refinding love, mostly through the hero, his daughters and the heroine’s friends, but ends slightly too tidy. They obviously have so many more obstacles to overcome, with six years apart at the top of the list. Still, it was a comfortable read – emotional but satisfying.
Melinda
Narration: C
Book Content: B
Steam Factor: Glad I have my ear buds in, although most of the book takes place while she’s in a coma and there is no steam there.
Violence: None
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
