Man Hands by Tanya Eby & Sarina Bowen

Narrated by Luke Daniels and Erin Mallon

Man Hands is a romantic comedy with accidental porn (possibly more than once), a fake engagement, double entendres about wieners and hardwood and, at the heart of it, a sweet love story about two people who are looking for family.

Brynn is a 34-year-old divorcee from Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a penchant for wrap dresses. The divorce was her idea but her ex barely seemed to notice. She feels she’s lost herself and she’s failed. Her friends, Sadie and Ash, have a plan to get her out of the doldrums and it involves rebound sex. When the trio crash a party and Brynn’s ex-husband is there with his hand on the ass of a nubile younger woman, drastic measures are called for. After some emergency alcoholic fortification, the girls set Brynn a task; kiss the next man who makes eye contact with her.

That next man happens to be Tom (last name Spanner – yes, Spanner), who happens to be the owner of the mansion where the party is held, although Brynn initially thinks he’s the gardener. Brynn, inspired, launches herself at Tom and he catches her, delighted.

Tom is “Mr. Fix It Quick”, the host of the eponymous TV program where he renovates homes for (mostly) women who are very grateful and don’t mind admiring his muscles and good looks while he’s at it. After a disastrous romance culminating in humiliation at the end of season nine of his show, Tom has been keeping a low profile in Michigan and has sworn off sex. Until Brynn, his plan had been to be celibate for a year. Before Brynn, he made it six months. After meeting Brynn he didn’t even make it six minutes.

When Tom and Brynn are together, they’re great. I enjoyed their chemistry and their flirty banter. I wished there was more time with them together before the finale – it was all a little too quick for me and I was mildly concerned that they hadn’t really shared that much with each other about their personal history (particularly on Tom’s part). Most of their interaction is around their chemistry and sex and how to restore their respective reputations (after the accidental porn). Man Hands is a romcom but I still wanted just a little more depth. And the possibility of it was there; Tom clearly had a sad childhood but the book barely scratches its surface.

I liked Brynn and appreciated that her HEA included success not just in the romance department. Her ex had done a number on her confidence and it was nice to see her settle into the self-assured, competent, sassy woman she really was.

The humour didn’t always work for me. At first, I was a little worried that it was going to be too broad and fall completely flat. There were times it did. But I pushed forward and ended up finding more to chuckle at than not. However, the comedy does tend toward dick jokes and bodily functions and it will not be to everyone’s tastes.

What bothered me the most about the book was the body shaming. Not Brynn’s body – she is a bigger woman with “sturdy thighs” and big boobs (something Tom adores). Brynn certainly develops her own body confidence over the course of the story. However, the narrative explicitly judged women who’d had breast augmentation as trashy and cheap and plastic. And, thin women were portrayed as bony and people who don’t eat much or enjoy their food. At one point Tom thinks back to his previous (and thin) girlfriend and does not remember sex with her fondly because she didn’t have enough padding for his comfort. These threads were woven through the story and I really wished they had not been. For the record, women of all body types are deserving of love and affection. A woman who’s had plastic surgery does not have less value than a woman who has not and plastic surgery is not a moral failing. Brynn coming into her own and Tom loving Brynn and finding her body attractive did not have to come at the expense of other women.

I enjoyed Erin Mallon’s narration, as I expected I would. She understood the humour of the novel and delivered it with good comedic timing. I also liked the way she clearly differentiated the voices between the three friends, Brynn, Sadie and Ash.

I’ve certainly enjoyed Luke Daniels’s narration before now. But his narration here was brilliant. Whereas Ms. Mallon sounded like she was reading a story (which is fine, it’s what she was doing after all), Mr. Daniels sounded like he was telling a story. With due respect to the actual authors, when I was listening to Luke Daniels it felt like he was Tom, speaking from personal experience; I forgot it was Luke Daniels performing – he was just Tom.

There were a couple of missteps even so. I’m not generally a huge fan of the anthropomorphising of penises so Mr. Daniels had to work particularly hard to convince me anyway. However, near the end, there was a section where I didn’t know who (what?) was speaking – Tom or his dick. And the tone from both (either?) was a little too …monstrous for me.

Because it seemed like Tom was telling me a story from his life, I was able to easily forgive that his female voices weren’t fabulous. They were okay, not awful and there was certainly no falsetto going on; but they were also not entirely female-sounding. I was so immersed in the performance however, to me, it was Tom who had the okay-but-not-great-sounding heroine voice, not Luke Daniels.

Both narrators sold the story well and I expect the medium helped me get over my initial reservations about whether the humour would work for me.

If there had been an absence of body shaming in the book I’d have rated the content in the B range, but as it was, the novel lost major points because of it. The narration however, was excellent – Man Hands is worth spending a credit on for Luke Daniels’s performance alone.

Kaetrin