Breaking Bailey’s Rules by Brenda Jackson

Breaking Baileys RulesNarrated by Sean Crisden

Breaking Bailey’s Rules is Book 30 – THIRTY! – in the Westmoreland series (ok, to be fair, it’s the 30th book but #26 in the series), which features a family that now spans several states and includes cousins and distant relatives, one branch of which has just been located in Alaska. The Outlaw family in Alaska was sired by Bart Outlaw who had six children with six women, and he raised them all. When Bart hears that the Westmorelands are claiming they are related, he’s not happy about it, thinking they are gold diggers. The Outlaw family agrees to send family friend Walker Rafferty to Colorado to check out the claim.

The Colorado Westmorelands are happy to have Walker come and see for himself that the Outlaws are kin to them, all except Bailey Walker, that is. If you’ve been following the series, you know that Bailey was one of 4 teenage delinquents who are now reformed 20-somethings. She has a set of rules to live by to keep her from straying back into her younger, wayward tendencies, and top of that list is to never leave Westmoreland country again. She and her siblings each have parcels of land, but she has never built a house and also doesn’t have a place of her own – she moves from family to family, house-sitting and being a sort of professional guest as her siblings and cousins get married and start families of their own. She seems insulted that the Outlaws don’t believe them, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about the visit. Of course, she has to pick Walker up at the airport – so she plans to school him on her attitude and her rules.

The Westmoreland saga is a Harlequin Desire line, beginning in 2002 with Delaney’s Desert Sheikh – so you can see it covers a lot of territory and tropes over time! It’s a good thing they have a lot of cousins and siblings to keep the dynasty (of the book series, I mean) going. Walker and Bailey, predictably, strike sparks – and then Walker goes about getting Bailey to break all her rules.

The writing is good and the characters well drawn, even though I really don’t like the whole snotty, rash, jump-to-conclusions attitude for Bailey. It makes her seem younger and more naive than her 28 years, some of which were spent in serious mischief-making, and as an internal conflict, isn’t that interesting. Jackson makes Walker a more compelling character, with an unexpected twist or two, although in this page count, there isn’t much time for character development and plot reveals.

Sean Crisden did the story justice. He has a very natural pacing for audiobook narration, and managed to give all the characters different voices and attitudes, with all the regular tools in a narrator’s toolbox – pitch, range, timbre, placement. His female voices were placed a little higher, not quite falsetto, although Bailey’s was pretty annoying most of the time (which usually fit her character).

There’s a bonus 90-minute story (Reclaimed by the Rancher) at the end by author Janice Maynard, read by narrator Elena Wolfe, that rounds out the short 6 hour audiobook. There’s not much character development and a questionable premise (that what a bride-to-be witnessed on the day before her wedding, which caused her to jilt the groom, might not have been what she thought – and now it’s 2 years later). Wolfe’s narration was adequate for this addition.

All in all, this was a run-of-the-mill Harlequin Desire audiobook with good narration – if you’re a Brenda Jackson and/or Westmoreland series fan, you won’t be disappointed.

Melinda


Narration: B

Book Content: C

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence Rating: None

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.

 

 

 

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