Say You’ll Stay by Corinne Michaels

say-youll-stayNarrated by Andi Arndt and Sebastian York

Presley Benson is a typical small-business-owner/mom in Pennsylvania, heading home from the small bakery she runs with her sister-in-law, where her 10-year-old twin boys and husband are waiting to go out to dinner. But when she gets home, her entire world cracks when she discovers her husband has committed suicide while her boys were downstairs playing video games. It’s a gut-wrenching start to a long litany of things gone wrong in Presley’s world, and she and the boys are penniless and homeless when she makes the hard decision to head to her parents’ ranch in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, someplace she swore she would never return to after leaving several years before.

Presley feels the men in her life have all let her down, starting with her father, who pinned his hopes on her running the family ranch. When she decided to follow her boyfriend to college in Pennsylvania instead, he refused to help pay for any expenses, and never forgave her for leaving. For her part, she never went back. Then there was Zach, her high school sweetheart, the one she followed – at least, until he made a career choice without her and left her behind for professional baseball. And now this…

Say You’ll Stay is a second-chance romance that gets rekindled when Presley learns Zach left baseball after his father had a stroke, and is now living in Bell Buckle again. She avoids even saying his name, even though his brother works on her family’s farm, so when she runs into him, with his current girlfriend who was an old high school rival of Presley’s, she’s stunned. But the sparks are still there between them, introducing one more struggle into Presley’s fragile hold on life.

This was an emotional listen, with the opening scenes just about ripping my heart out as Presley tries the shield the boys from finding out how their father died (while they were downstairs – oh, the agony!), then as she tries to unravel the lies her husband had been telling her, the ones that led him to his decision. Once Presley arrives in Bell Buckle, the dramatic tension eased a little, with her immature-inner-child coming out in scenes with her brother and with the evil-bitch girlfriend. But the emotional and sexual tension ramped up whenever Zach and Presley were alone. I felt that Presley was drawn very realistically – she was a strong woman who stood up for herself, especially when she was under the scrutiny of just about everyone for her decisions. Who knew better than she what her life was like now, a young widow who found her husband dead, the husband who had betrayed her in life and in death? Somehow that never stops even well-meaning people from giving unsolicited advice, and I was proud of her for speaking up. But, of course, in the midst of all this she is keeping secrets – not the least of which was that her husband killed himself – and has to face the consequences.

The story is told in first person from both Presley’s and Zach’s point of view, although most of it was Presley, so Andi Arndt carried the majority of the book. She is fast becoming a favorite narrator of mine – her pacing is very natural, and she really gets inside the character of Presley. When Presley is still in Pennsylvania, her accent is very neutral, but when she gets worked up in Tennessee, her Southern starts to show, and Arndt does this transition very subtly but well. She differentiates between characters, and has enough of a pitch variation to easily indicate gender. Her style is storytelling, which fits the author’s style as well. What else can be said about Sebastian York as my candidate for Male Contemporary Romance Narrator of the Decade? He uses a slight Tennessee/Southern accent for Zach that is authentic, and it’s easy to tell which of the many characters he is voicing – Zach’s brothers Wyatt and Trent, Presley’s brother Cooper, as well as all the other secondary players (and Presley). Of course, I’ve done so much listening of York and Arndt in the past few months that I almost have them stereotyped, so I admit I kept waiting for Zach to talk like some of the other characters I’ve read recently in books by Lauren Blakely, Emma Chase, or Louise Bay. This story isn’t like any of those, however! Still, his pitch, his range, his delivery – really, he’s got a total wrap on the whole Contemporary Romance thing as far as I’m concerned.

Full Disclosure: I admit that I was attracted to this book by Book 2 in the series, Say You Want Me, since it features another favorite narrator, Sophie Eastlake – so when I saw Book 1 was Arndt/York, I was sold! This is my first book by this author, although BJ reviewed Consolation and Conviction earlier this year and gave high recommendations. I like her voice, so I’ll be looking for more of her in audio. As a side note, these books are both available in Whispersync, so you can get both the Kindle and Audible versions for about $6 at Amazon right now (25 November 2016). You have to buy the Kindle version to get the Whispersync price, which isn’t a hardship for me as I often like to read the book first anyway.

Melinda


Narration: B+

Book Content: B+

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence Rating: None

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Corinne Michaels

 

 

 

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