Tell Me by Abigail Strom

Tell Me by Abigail StromNarrated by Leora Ben-Zev

In Tell Me, bookstore owner Jane Finch despairs of ever meeting her “ideal man”. She’s a nerd and regards herself as plain and forever in the shadow of her beautiful and athletic older sister, Sam. When Jane meets “Handsome Dan” at the store one day, she is hopeful that he could in fact be Mr. Right. But Sam breezes in and Dan is instantly smitten – with the wrong sister.

Jane is used to this. Sam is model gorgeous and has a vivacious personality. But she can’t help but be jealous of her older sister, no matter how much she loves her.

Sam’s best friend and business partner, Caleb Bryce, has been close to both Finch women since he first met Sam when they were both in college. Caleb and Sam run an adventure trekking company and take clients all over the world on various hiking and climbing trips. Both Sam and Caleb have a wanderlust and enjoy their jobs but there has never been anything romantic between them. Jane has had a crush on Caleb for such a long time, sometimes she hardly notices its existence. It’s kind of like a nagging back pain – something she has to live with and something that’s not likely to ever make her happy (or so she thinks). Jane doesn’t think that a man like Caleb could ever go for her.

Caleb is a kind of cowboy/adventurer/businessman so he ticks many of the contemporary romance hero boxes. He has also had feelings for Jane for some time but he’s been in denial about them.

Both Caleb and Jane dance around each other, not admitting their attraction but it is obvious that they have searing chemistry. When Caleb offers “flirting lessons” to Jane, things only get more heated between them.

Then tragedy strikes and the book takes a sad turn I was only expecting because I happened across an early review. It started off as a fairly light friends-to-lovers story but about halfway through it becomes about coping with grief. Caleb and Jane do find their way to love but it takes time and their path is not as direct as might first appear.

Even before the sad event, the thing really keeping Jane and Caleb apart was their vastly divergent lifestyles. He is a wanderer. She is a homebody. He is an adventurer, a nature-geek. She is a book nerd. She is afraid of avalanches, bears, spiders, rockslides – well, you get the idea. How can they forge a life together and have a happy ever after?

I could maybe wish the book had’ve spent a little more time on this aspect and not taken the hard right into sadness and loss, but nevertheless, I did believe in them as a couple. And, even though not everything had been ironed out between them I was confident they would be able to work through those remaining issues successfully.

There is also a lovely homage to Anne of Green Gables in the book and Caleb proves his worth by falling in love with the book as well. I mean, points for that alone amirite??

Leora Ben-Zev is a new-to-me narrator. I liked her performance quite a bit. She didn’t have the deepest hero voice but it was sufficiently different to the other character portrayals that I was able to easily tell when Caleb was speaking. Sam had vibrant, bubbly tones and Jane was more dreamy and deferential. As the story progressed, Jane came out of her shell somewhat and Ms. Ben-Zev reflected this in her narration.

The pacing was good and there was reasonable emotional heft to the performance as well, particularly the scene in Jane’s apartment near Christmas time. There are only a couple of sex scenes in the book (which was fine – it suited the story) and while they were complete, they were not terribly explicit. Ms. Ben-Zev conveyed the emotional connection apparent between Caleb and Jane with skill.

As the book progressed, both the story and the narration grew on me. The novel had a bit of a slow start; I found it somewhat difficult to settle into the novel and relax into Ms. Ben-Zev’s performance. The second half of the book is far more emotional and it was here in particular that the narration impressed me.

The book felt like it didn’t quite know what it wanted to me; a light flirty fun book or an emotional angst-ridden tearjerker and as such didn’t quite hit the mark either way. That said, I did end up enjoying the book and I plan to listen to more from this author.

Kaetrin

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