Just Say When by Kaylee Ryan

Narrated by Jillian Macie & Nelson Hobbs

I usually like the “best friend’s little sister” trope (or the “older brother’s best friend” trope depending on whose point of view one is in I guess) but Just Say When failed to deliver for me on the core conflict. Usually with this trope, the couple starts off as a sex-only fling – something the older brother could legitimately be upset about because of the “bro code”. But in this book, both main characters were pretty much already deeply in love by the time they got together and for the life of me I couldn’t work out why it would be a problem – unless the older brother thinks his BFF is a rat bastard. And why on earth would he be BFFs with a rat bastard??

Nathan and Ava have grown up together. Nathan is best friends with Ava’s older brother, Brodie. At age 18, both Nathan and Brodie joined the Marines. Brodie is still serving, currently based in Hawaii, but Nathan got out after his father had a stroke and subsequently took over the family gym. He now trains MMA fighters as well, even though he is not a fighter himself.

Ava is just about to finish her sophomore year of college where she’s studying to be a dietician. She’s a study-aholic but her parents have prevailed upon her to take the summer off before her junior year. Ava’s roommate and best friend, Kara, is delighted Ava has decided to let her hair down a little.

Even though Ava and Nate live in the same town, neither has seen the other for two years, since Nate’s father’s stroke. Nate has avoided Ava because of his inappropriate feelings towards his buddy’s little sister. Ava feels she has an inappropriate crush and Nate could never think of her as anything other than a surrogate sibling. In order to try and get over her feelings for Nate, she hasn’t sought him out.

However, when Kara starts dating one of the fighters Nate trains, Ava’s and Nate’s paths cross again and they are unable to deny their attraction.

Even though they haven’t seen one another for two years, the listener, to buy into the story, needs to believe they already truly know each other. And sure, they do know a lot of things about each other. But they have never before related as more-than-friends and they have grown and changed in the time since they last saw each other. Disappointingly, this wasn’t really acknowledged by the narrative.

Nate tends toward the flowery emotional thoughts – complete with a heart that “flutters” when Ava is near and thinking of Ava’s hair as “sun-kissed”. Actually, he may have said that last aloud. It was difficult to tell when either main character was speaking or just thinking to themselves. I often had to guess because it wasn’t clear even from the context. Sometimes, when I thought that a statement must have been internal (mostly because it would have sounded too gag-inducing to speak aloud) I was surprised when the other person in the conversation responded to it! I think I was wrong about 50% of the time.

Even though Nate is a muscular former Marine who owns a super-manly fighters’ gym, he was nevertheless an emotional marshmallow. A lot of his conversation felt a bit like wish-fulfillment rather than something he would actually say or think.

Some of the plot didn’t make sense to me. Ultimately, I thought the author was just trying to get the characters together and logic didn’t necessarily have a part to play in the process. Also, at one stage, I became unreasonably hung up on Nate’s suggestion he cook burgers on the grill, only for Ava to actually have to MAKE THE BURGERS!!

For reasons which failed to convince me, everyone is worried that Brodie will freak out when he finds out that Nate and Ava are together. Months go by, for equally unconvincing reasons – apart from the demands of the thin plot that is – before Nate is able to speak to Brodie about his relationship with Ava. But Nate is a good guy. He’s deeply in love with Ava – so why exactly would Brodie be upset??

There was really no other conflict to the story and I found myself pretty bored actually. There wasn’t any real tension to keep me interested.

The narrations weren’t good enough to overcome the deficiencies in the plot but they were better than the story. Nelson Hobbs sounds a bit like Keanu Reeves – which may or may not be a plus depending on the individual listener. The text was a bit too overwrought and flowery for the manly alpha Nate and I think Mr. Hobbs struggled with the characterisation a bit – I couldn’t blame him. Nate was pretty inconsistently drawn. I’ve enjoyed hearing Mr. Hobbs narrate Shannon McKenna romantic suspense books and they are the very definition of Over The Top but the characters as written by Ms. McKenna make internal sense. It wasn’t that Just Say When was a bit ridiculous which bothered me most. It was also discordant and erratic. Both Mr. Hobbs and Ms. Macie struggled to bring a sense of realism for this listener. However, Mr. Hobbs does do a good female character voice and his technique is solid enough.

Jillian Macie’s narration was inconsistent also. She used what I can only describe as a version of vocal fry in much of the listen and it was distracting and, even worse, it made the story (even more) boring. There was something about the low register fade-out at the end of sentences which felt a bit like she was “phoning it in”. When Ms. Macie wasn’t doing the nearly-vocal-fry, I enjoyed her performance a lot more because that was then she sounded engaged and interested.

I struggled to get through Just Say When. Frankly, I wanted to say “when” before Chapter 2 ended.

Kaetrin