Narrated by Heather Smith
Sophie Smith is a landscape architect who designs golf courses. She travels to Maverick, Montana in an attempt to persuade the Town Council and local Native American tribal council to acquiesce to the development. I Googled and it appears the Kooskia tribe is made up. This tribe is very wealthy and runs a casino and has various other business interests, as well as members of the tribe owning their own ranches etc.
Jake Lodge is the grandson of the Chief of the Kooskia tribe and the tribe’s lawyer. The tribe welcomes Sophie and loves her design but insists that the “land does not want the golf course to be built there”. There is a concern that the course will damage the nearby Mineral Lake (which is owned by the tribe – the proposed land development is not) but the main objection seems to be that the land itself does not want it. It is a difficult argument to rebut.
Jake is a widower with a six-year-old daughter he adores and a close family (I expect brothers Quinn and Colton and sister Dawn will be getting their own books). Sophie’s mother was a social climber who dumped Sophie in boarding school when she married a wealthy man and, when her mother and stepfather died, Sophie was left with no one. She has a semi-close relationship with her stepdad’s brother, the owner of the business she works for and is friends (with a mild crush) with Preston, another landscape architect but there are no other close people in her life – and apparently no female friends. When Sophie is so easily accepted and amalgamated into the Lodge family and the wider tribe, she experiences a sense of belonging for the first time.
Sparks fly between Sophie and Jake and, despite being on opposite sides of the development debate, they agree to embark upon a no-strings fling while she is in town. Things get complicated when a condom breaks during a marathon night of sex. Sadly Plan B wasn’t even a consideration, which in this day and age, was a surprise. I can understand a character choosing not to use it, but to not even consider it seemed odd, especially since Sophie and Jake had known each other for so little time (about a week – the time in the book is a bit fuzzy as there are some weeks which seem really long and appear to have way more than seven nights) and are not planning on having a relationship beyond her short stay in town.
There is a suspense subplot which kind of fizzled for me, involving threats to Sophie over the development.
Sophie’s true love is art and she takes the opportunity to spend a lot of time drawing and painting while in Maverick. I didn’t quite understand why she had so much time on her hands to allow this – she had already designed the golf course and only needed to be in Maverick for a few days but ended up staying much longer.
Against The Wall 
I would have liked more detail about the tribe’s culture (I don’t know what, if any, actual tribe they were based upon). It was touched upon briefly but it seemed to me, as an Australian with only a vague knowledge of Native American culture, that the Lodge family could have been just about any large and loving family.
I was surprised (and disappointed) to see the Native American hero described repeatedly as “primitive” and on one occasion “uncivilized”. While those words are often used to describe a Caucasian romance hero and, in such circumstances, might be called clichéd but otherwise innocent, with a Native American hero, the words become problematic indeed. At the very least, it indicated a cultural insensitivity which was at odds with the story.
New-to-me narrator, Heather Smith (according to the Tantor website, the narrator is Ann Marie Lee, but on the CD, she identifies herself as Heather Smith*) does a creditable job with the story. Her male voices were differentiated with rougher tones but weren’t super deep in pitch. There wasn’t very much tonal difference between the hero, Jake, and his brothers and I mainly had to rely upon dialogue tags, although it was easy to tell the men from the women. Her little girl depiction for Jake’s daughter was very good. She was very clear in her narration but this sometimes meant that the storytelling suffered. The dialogue was well rendered but the narrative was sometimes slow – it felt like she was trying to make each word defined and clear but this came at a loss to the story aspect of the delivery. It felt too slow and staccato.
I had the impression by the end of the book that Ms. Smith (or Ms. Lee) will be a narrator to watch as she becomes even more experienced. I’m assuming she isn’t super experienced as there are only nine Ann Marie Lee titles in the Tantor store. As I settled into her style, I enjoyed the way she delivered the story quite a bit. I felt that she understood the characters and got the vibe of the book and I would listen to her again.
This book has its flaws, but if you’re in the mood for a story where you don’t want to think too much and the hero gets to rescue the heroine from various dangerous situations, this might fit the bill.
*I listened to a sample of another title narrated by Ann Marie Lee and it sounded like the same person who narrates Against the Wall so it seems that Heather Smith might be a pseudonym?
Kaetrin
Narration: C+
Book Content: C
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence: Minimal
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Against the Wall was provided to AudioGals for review by Tantor Audio.
Interesting that the timing thing got you (weeks longer than 7 days) – I experience that in books and TV, and wonder how people get so much done in one day/one week/one month… The protagonist will go to dinner, then do something else, then the author mentions the bright sky (after a dinner date?), then one more errand before… I thought I was the only one looking at my watch when this happens!! Is that a sign that my mind was wandering during the story, so I wasn’t engaged, I wonder?
And good to know you’ve found a good narrator to watch – always welcome!