Narrated by Amy Rubinate
Kristan Higgins has a delightful contemporary romance voice – romantic comedy based on the foibles of family life and small town America, with some weightier subjects woven in for a dose of reality, and usually a Notable Pet in the form of a great dog. Faith Holland had left her family and the family wine business in upstate New York a few years ago to find her own way in San Francisco. She returns when her siblings send out the SOS: their widowed father has unwittingly gotten involved with a brash gold-digger, and they need Faith to help find him a good woman.
The town remembers Faith well because she’d been left at the altar when her perfect, NFL-quality football hero-turned-doctor fiancé finally realized that he was, well, gay – at the altar, when the preacher asked if anyone knew of any reason the marriage should not go on. Jeremy’s best man – and best friend Levi Cooper – had known for years, but Jeremy himself couldn’t bring himself to admit it, even to himself. Although tragic, there are even some great laugh-out-loud moments during this reveal early in the book – again, trademark Higgins moments. It takes a while – a really, really long while – for Faith to forgive Levi for busting up her marriage and to then give in to their mutual attraction. It takes longer for the two of them to give up their long-held secrets and find their own HEA. It’s touching and funny and has some great emotional moments, as well as a wide cast of characters in family and co-workers and neighbors.
Now for my take on the narration. Amy Rubinate is an experienced narrator – 57 current listings at Audible, including some duplicates unabridged/abridged – with several genres in her bio. She has good adult character voices, varied in pitch and accent and timbre so that they are all easily recognized. Her male characters sound good and are pitched low enough to be easily distinguishable. The few children in the book were given the same range as her males, which was really odd and unexpected. Her pacing is better suited to suspense – she pushed through, using not exactly a monotone, but not varying her voice much, so that I had to listen very carefully for the humor, which her narration did not acknowledge. And it wasn’t just that she gave it a dry tone, which would fit some of the humor – it was the lack of a different tone for serious parts and humorous parts. There was just one hard-driving tone for the entire narration. The text would have benefited from some well-timed pauses that let the words sink in, or let you transition from one scene to the next. The narration was adequate for getting the story into my ears but it didn’t really convey the story to me. I feel like I need to read it in print now to truly appreciate the humor, which I could tell by the words she said, but not her delivery.
If you want to Whispersync it, right now the Kindle book is available for $3.99 and then you can get the Audible version for $3.49 more – it’s a great deal for a book, and then you can go back and read the funny scenes to better savor them!
Melinda
Narration: C
Book Content: A
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence: None
Genre: Contemporary romance
Publisher: Tantor Audio
The Best Man was provided by Tantor Audio to AudioGals for review.
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Lisa posted a quick review of this title on Hot Listen today, and I got very curious. She really enjoyed too. Now I’m definitely adding it to me TBL.
Great review!
I agree 100% with your review. I did use Whispersync, so read some parts and listened to others. This was actually my first Kristan Higgins book and I loved just about everything about it, so am now reading her earlier books. But, while I loved this book, the narration felt robotic to me. As you said, the narrator doesn’t vary her voice much at all and, honestly, I only continued to listen to the audio vs reading the book entirely, because I didn’t want to stop “reading” when I had to do work around the house or run errands.
As I’m making my way through Kristin’s other books, I’ve had the chance to listen to narrations of “Catch of the Day”, narrated by Xe Sands and “Somebody to Love”, narrated by Justine Eyre and they are very enjoyable. I’m hoping that more of Kristin’s books will be available in audiobook format soon, but also hope they do not ask Ms. Rubinate to narrate any others.