Instant Attraction by Jill Shalvis

Narrated by Liisa Ivary

Instant Attraction is the first in Ms. Shalvis’ Wilder series, which is finally available on audio performed by Liisa Ivary, a new-to-me narrator. Overall, I enjoyed her performance and it was good to revisit my favourite story in the trilogy.

Cameron Wilder was a champion snowboarder who, about a year earlier, injured his knee while boarding, leaving him unable to compete at the elite level anymore. He wandered around the world for a while after he got out of hospital, but the book starts when he comes home to Wilder Adventures, high in the Sierras in California. It’s winter and he’s very tired and cold when he stumbles into his cabin – only to find that his bed is occupied by a pretty woman.

Accountant Katie Kramer has decided to live “balls out” after being the only survivor of a bridge collapse in Santa Monica. Heading away from LA, she drove north and stopped in the Sierras. Wilder Adventures seemed to be a good place to start because she has decided that she wants adventure in her life, so she accepts a month-long-only temp job with them.

Cameron and Katie are instantly attracted to one another (as the title suggests) but both have a number of issues to work through about their previous traumatic and life-changing experiences and then there is the little matter of the fact that Katie is leaving for further (as yet unknown) adventures at the end of her month with the Wilder clan.

The romance is quick but Cameron and Katie spend a lot of time together and I was able to buy into it without any difficulty. I enjoyed their banter, and their chemistry sparkled off the page.

There’s a secondary second-chance-at-love subplot involving Annie, Cameron’s aunt and the cook for Wilder Adventures. She and Nick have been married for a long time but fell into a rut and stopped “seeing each other”. In a desperate effort to shake things up, Annie presented Nick with divorce papers and kicked him out of their cabin. (Not a strategy which I’d recommend personally, but there you go.) Nick works for the Wilders too so he and Annie are often in each other’s company. Annie is a bit of a curmudgeon and I think Ms. Ivary’s narration stood out when she was giving voice to this character. Annie had exactly the tones I heard in my head when I read the book. Nick and Annie love each other but they’re very bad at showing it and it takes most of the book for them to start to get it right.

Annie raised Cam from the age of eight, when she was just 18 herself. Cameron’s actual father is unknown and his legal father was abusive to him because of it. His mother took off after Cameron’s birth. The other Wilder brothers, TJ and Stone, love him dearly but it’s clear Cam has always felt on the outer because of the circumstances of his birth. Both Katie and Cam find a sense of family and belonging by the end of the story.

Katie is kind and friendly, with a bubbly personality and a lot of the time; I felt the voice Ms. Ivary used for her sounded too old. As I’ve said above, her portrayal of Annie was magnificent however. Also great was her depiction of the two secondary female characters – Harley and Serena (the latter of whom is a classy femme fatale type and who was given a suitably smoky sexy voice).

There wasn’t a huge amount of difference between Ms. Ivary’s narrative voice and the tones she gave to the male characters. I’d have liked them to be a little deeper and better differentiated but, that said, I didn’t have trouble working out who was speaking for the most part. I only occasionally got a little mixed up between Cameron and Katie – dialogue tags were my friend.

Ms. Ivary did convey the snap and sizzle of the banter between Cam and Katie very well and I liked the way she delivered the humour of the story also.

I think fans of this author and/or small town contemporaries will be pleased by this offering.

Kaetrin

Narration: B-

Book Content: B

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Minimal

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Audible Studios

Instant Attraction was provided to AudioGals by Audible Studios for a review.

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