Tamed by Emma Chase

Narrated by Deacon Lee

Having absolutely fallen in love with Emma Chase’s writing in Tangled, and in particular with her self-invented breed of alpha, arrogant, witty investment bankers who can only be “tamed” by even stronger, smarter, wittier heroines, I just knew I had to listen to Tamed! Although not as intense as Tangled, Tamed was nevertheless a hit for me. I was pleasantly surprised to find that unlike many other books that come later in a series of a highly acclaimed book, Tamed actually delivers on all the same fronts as Tangled; it’s hilarious, sexy, witty, suspenseful, and romantic! Perhaps the main difference between the stories is a role reversal of the hero and heroine. Matthew, the hero of this story, is an all-around easier-to-like hero, while the heroine, Dee, slowly wins you over by proving that you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to listen to Tangled, or Twisted (Book 2 of the Tangled series), and want to listen to Tamed now, don’t worry, as Tamed can pretty much be read as a standalone. All that said, Tangled was an amazing audiobook, and if you haven’t yet had a chance to listen to it, you should consider doing so. In fact, Tangled was so well liked that it was one of our six finalists in our AudioGals’ Best Romance Audiobooks of 2013, and also won the 2013 Goodreads’ Debut Author Award! An added benefit of reading Tangled first is that Tamed takes place at the same time, and incorporates some of the memorable moments from Tangled, albeit from a different perspective, thereby answering some of those lingering questions that you may have still had at the end of Tangled.

Matthew, a young investment banker at one of NYC’s top investment banks (and Drew’s best friend from Tangled), is living the dream by day brokering million dollar deals while living the life at night partying at NYC’s most exclusive night clubs. Having been hurt once, he doesn’t do relationships. Then he meets Delores “Dee”, Kate’s best friend from Tangled and one of the most colorful (e.g., pierced, short-skirt wearing, generally wild) chemists you will ever meet!

Dee knows how to have a good time, and she makes sure to live life to the max. However, she never sticks around long enough for anyone to be able to disappoint her. That’s why after one of the best nights of her life, she tells Matthew that he doesn’t have to call, even when he’s insisting that he wants to (and she refuses to return his call when he does). Fortunately, Matthew has the patience of a saint and the indomitable will of a warrior and continues his pursuit, but will it be enough to slay the demons from Dee’s past? Slow and steady wins the race, and what a tortured course it is. As the book description states, everyone knows where this story is headed, but the path there is definitely the best part, and in his rendition of the tale, Matthew makes sure you’re entertained the whole way!

I found it interesting that rather than have Sebastian York, who performed a magnificent rendition of Tangled, come back to narrate Tamed, a new narrator, Deacon Lee, was cast. Of course with the incredible success of Tangled, and in particular Sebastian York’s narration, that’s no small assignment. As a result, I no doubt set an unusually high bar. So it’s no surprise that I came away at the end feeling that Lee’s narration, while good, fell a little short.

The largest issue I struggled with was a rather common one. In many long passages, you can hear Mr. Lee gasp for air in between phrases. While this could have been corrected in the editing process, and therefore not strictly attributable to the narrator, there is only one narration grade, and therefore this type of issue automatically lowers the narration grade to a B-. Without it, I would have given Mr. Lee’s performance a B. Another much more minor issue, in comparison, relates to the similarity of the younger female voices. While I generally prefer more differentiation in the depictions, this affected a relatively small portion of the dialogue, and really did not detract much.

Now on to the good points. What I loved the most of Mr. Lee’s performance was his characterization of Matthew. Mr. Lee does a great job of bringing Matthew’s personality traits to life. You could hear his amusement with the many tongue-in-cheek humorous lines. Additionally, he sounded so patient and sweet, expertly personifying Matthew’s strongest traits.

Mr. Lee’s adaptation also shows adeptness at creating accents for a number of the secondary characters. From the upscale New York socialites, to the characters raised in Brooklyn, I appreciated his attention to these differences in the various characters, and it really helped to drive home the particular scene being enacted.

There were so many things that I enjoyed about this book, that it’s hard to describe them all. Perhaps one of the ones that I appreciated the most was that, like Tangled, Tamed is written entirely from the hero’s perspective. I find that many times stories like this are much more interesting when told from the male’s perspective. Tangled does not disappoint. Hearing the story from Matthew’s perspective not only adds to the humor (as men sure have a way of saying and thinking of things, and Ms. Chase doesn’t hold back), but it also adds to the suspense, given that in this story, it’s Dee who is holding many of the past secrets that must be unveiled. Another device employed by Ms. Chase that I really admired was her use of pop culture with references from long ago, such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club, to the more recent ones, including the comic use of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy (if you’ve read or listened to this one, you know what I mean!); these tie-ins further enhanced the fictional parts of her story by conjuring familiar real life feelings to put it all in context.

BJ

Narration:  B-

Book Content:  A-

Steam Factor:  For your burning ears only

Violence:  Minimal

Genre:  Contemporary Romance

Publisher:  Simon and Schuster

Tamed was provided to AudioGals for review by Simon and Schuster.