Narrated by Caitlin Kelly & Greg Tremblay
I am a sucker for a single dad story so the blurb for Forever Right Now caught my eye. Single dad with maternal grandparents suing for custody? Check. Former drug addict girlfriend to complicate matters? Check and check.
Sawyer Haas is a law student about to embark on his final year of law school when the book begins. He has his future all mapped out. He will graduate college in San Francisco, pass the bar exam, clerk for a respected federal judge and then go on to become a federal prosecutor. Along the way, he’ll have fun hookups and blow off some steam at parties with his buddies. He’s a bit of a player and not the most respectful of women, at least at the start. Then, a former hookup turns up on his doorstep with a baby she tells him is his. Then she rabbits – leaving him, literally, holding the baby.
Fast forward 10 months and Sawyer has changed his life for his daughter, Olivia. He is still studying and his career plan is in place. But he has moved out of the house he shared with college buddies and lives alone in a (fortunately) rent-controlled apartment in an old Victorian house. His life is about studying and caring for his beloved daughter. He lost his heart to her mere moments after they first met. There isn’t much in the book about the steep learning curve he had in order to pick up the whole fatherhood deal. But clearly he has done a good job of it. Olivia is healthy and happy. In about two months, Sawyer will be able to petition the court to have his name put on Olivia’s birth certificate. He lives in fear of Molly, Olivia’s mother, coming back and perhaps taking her away. (I wondered about the waiting a year to petition the court thing, but it is more fully explained later in the book. Wait for it, it makes sense. I don’t know if it’s the actual law, but it held together for the sake of the story so I was good with it.)
Moving in upstairs is Darlene. We first meet Darlene when she is in New York. She is a recovering drug addict and after yet another failed relationship, she moves across the country to get a fresh start. She’s just qualified as a massage therapist and has a job lined up at a fancy day spa and a rent-controlled sublet in San Francisco. She is on parole for drug related offences and has to attend mandatory Narcotics Anonymous meetings three times a week for the next year. Darlene is a former dancer and has just started dancing again. She also hopes to resurrect her dreams of a career in dance in California.
When Darlene first moves to San Francisco she keeps her involvement in NA completely separate from the rest of her life. She regards herself as “recovered” rather than “recovering” and does not wish for anyone in her new life to know about her past, to judge her for it. Over the course of the story, she faces her demons and learns to be honest with herself and those around her.
Sawyer and Darlene become friends, slowly. “Sawyer the lawyer” (yes, it’s a recurring joke in the book and Sawyer doesn’t like it much) is suspicious and standoffish at first but Darlene is vibrant and generous and it is only a matter of time before Sawyer is toast.
Sawyer’s hopes to clerk for the judge are threatened when the judge sets a final assignment for the two law students competing for the clerkship; he has to prepare a brief about a personal experience and how he would prosecute it if he were in that role. The judge (I query the realism of this but I’d like to think it’s possible) wants Sawyer to do more than cite cases. He wants Sawyer to be more than black and white, the law is the law. What about justice? he asks. Fairness? Sawyer has an eidetic memory. Studying cases and statutes is easy for him. But seeing the law as anything other than black or white, right vs wrong, is difficult for him.
Then Olivia’s grandparents turn up wanting to challenge custody and everything changes again. It looks like Sawyer will lose everything, including what was just beginning between him and Darlene.
Darlene, for her part, realises that she is a liability for Sawyer as he fights to keep his daughter. She has a criminal record and is a recovering addict. Not the kind of girl who looks good on paper to be around a child.
There is a HEA and I did like the themes of found family that ran through the book. Sawyer and Darlene each have a support network, which expands and then blends, over the course of the story. Each main character has a distinct story arc which meshes with their arc as a couple. It was an emotional story (but happy in the end I promise!), consolidated by great narration from both Caitlin Kelly and Greg Tremblay.
I put the success of the audiobook for me mostly down to the narration. The story was very good, but the narration made it.
I listened to Caitlin Kelly narrate Intermediate Thermodynamics recently and I said then that I was unsure whether it was the text or the narration which distanced me from the heroine. I thought it was likely the text and wanted to try her work again with a different author to test my theory. Darlene felt much more accessible here, with Ms. Kelly depicting her with warmth and empathy that I found endearing. There wasn’t a lot of humour in Forever Right Now so I still don’t know about Ms. Kelly’s comedic ability but I’d be happy to listen to more from her.
As for Greg Tremblay, well what can I say? He is fast becoming the favourite narrator here at AudioGals. He is wonderful to listen to and has a broad range of character voices. Female characters sound believably female and his depiction of Olivia was all the cuteness.
Forever Right Now is the kind of book which hit me in the feels and I found myself looking for excuses to keep listening and that probably says all you really need to know.
Kaetrin
Buy Forever Right Now by Emma Scott on Amazon
