Second Chance Summer by Jill Shalvis

Second Chance SummerNarrated by Karen White

It’s a new Jill Shalvis title, y’all! Yippee!

Lily Danville has returned to Cedar Ridge, Colorado with her tail tucked between her legs. Getting fired wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it hadn’t meant returning to the one place she hasn’t been back to in over ten years – the place where her sister fell to her death, her dad died at her funeral, and the place where she left the man she adored: Aidan Kincaid. It’s only for a few months; she can work with her friend and do her best to avoid Aidan at all costs. It’s not that small of a town, she can do this.

Of course, discovering her new place of employment is in the resort Aidan’s family owns kills any hope of never seeing him. It’s going to take all the courage and fake-it-till-you-make-it skills she learned in Los Angeles to get through the next few months and not get close to Aidan. However, he is just as determined to talk to Lily and find out the truth of why she left with no word all those years ago.

Jill Shalvis is one my favorite authors of contemporary romance. She has a talent for writing heart-warming books and portraying realistic male impressions. Yet, for all that these elements are present in Second Chance Summer, I felt like I had read this book before. One of my friends on Goodreads said this book is a cross between her Wilder Brothers and Lucky Harbor series. While I haven’t read the previous series, I have read the latter one and agree. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I really enjoy her LH books – but I expected something a little different here. I’m not sure why, maybe because this is a new series and I was hoping for a fresh new start. I know contemporary romances have similar tropes in common and in sometimes I desire that similarity, but this time it was too much of the same.

This is a small issue; the real reason for the lower grading is due to Lily’s character. I do NOT like her, not one bit! She whines unnecessarily about her circumstances without doing much to overcome them. I wouldn’t say she falls into the TSTL category but more like the Scarlet O’Hara one – tomorrow is another day so don’t worry about [insert problem] right now. Of course, her problems never get resolved because she never works up the energy to solve them. Aidan is most of her motivating force; she doesn’t confront something until he does. He’s the one to say I love you first then has to point out she feels the same. He’s the one who resolves to let the past go and look to the future, then pushes her to do the same. Don’t get the impression he’s forcing her to do these things, it’s more like she’s okay being stuck in the rut until he comes and smooths the path for her. This isn’t the case with her working self, only her personal one. I wish she had exhibited this confidence in every aspect of her life instead of only bits of it.

Karen White, like Shalvis, has become synonymous with contemporary romance in my mind. She is one of my favorite narrators although it is hard for me to enjoy any other genre she narrates. Her performance in Second Chance Summer, however, isn’t one of my favorites. White’s male voices are usually differentiated by tone (or accent if called for) and it’s not bad if there are only one or two male characters in any scene. If there are too many (as here where at least three males converse at a time), it makes a group conversation very difficult to navigate. I easily lost track of who was speaking and got confused as to which brother was saying what. The exception is the bisexual hairdresser friend of Lily’s – his is a voice recognizable in any situation! Of course her female characters are wonderful as usual as is the overall performance.

I will mention a quirk I noticed. White has this weird way of saying Aidan’s name. Whether it’s a pronunciation unique to my location (remember, I live in the country), I assume this name is pronounced as “A-den”. That’s how I’ve always heard it. However, she made it sound “E-dan”. It could be the correct pronunciation for Colorado but it hit me wrong and kicked me out of the story every time I heard it. The weird thing is it only happened with her general narrative; when voicing characters, it sounded like I thought it should. So I can’t say if it is a deliberate choice she made or something she is unaware happens with this combination of letters.

I feel like this review is one nitpick rant and I’m sorry if that’s the case. I love Shalvis and White; it’s just I’ve listened to quite a bit of this duo and know what they’re capable of. And while I didn’t feel this was the best book for both of them, I still can’t recommend either of them highly enough.

Diana


Narration:  C+

Book Content:  B-

Steam Factor:  Glad I had my ear buds in

Violence:  Minimal

Genre:  Contemporary Romance

Publisher:  Hachette Audio

 

Second Chance Summer was provided to AudioGals by Hachette Audio for review.

6 thoughts on “Second Chance Summer by Jill Shalvis

  1. I listened to this, also, but had a different take-away on Lily. She just seemed a little lost and was uncertain how to deal with it given the tragedy in her past. She didn’t seem to realize she was in a rut and to me any lack of energy was fueled by depression which I can’t characterize as a personality flaw. Her cluelessness was frustrating, perhaps, as was the way she pushed away Aidan, (a pet peeve), but I didn’t dislike her.

    And to dissent further (different strokes, I know!) I loved KW’s narration, don’t think I could not enjoy something she does. Didn’t notice the E-dan, A-den pronunciation problem, you’ve got me curious that I missed it and I may go back to see if I notice now. I lived in Colorado for 20+ years and believe the correct pronunciation there is A-den, also.

    Thanks for the review, I do enjoy hearing other people’s thoughts on books I’ve listened to.

  2. My take on Karen’s pronunciation in this book was that sometimes I could swear she was saying Hayden, with an H sound, not Aiden – like there was extra breath in her voice. I didn’t notice it as E-dan vs A-den but I wonder if we were hearing the same issue and interpreting it differently!

    1. Melinda, that’s entirely possible. I’ll be the first one to admit I often hear things incorrectly! Just ask my family. :P

    2. Yes, originally I thought I heard “Hayden”, also. In fact, I looked at the blurb about the book to double-check the spelling. I thought it was me mishearing!

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