Unbreak My Heart by Lauren Blakely

Narrated by Joe Arden & Erin Mallon

Unbreak My Heart is a little different to the typical Lauren Blakely book. While it definitely has witty banter and moments of light-hearted fun, it is a much more melancholy book than something like Mister O, for example. Tissues are recommended.

Andrew Peterson is grief-stricken. His beloved older brother Ian died from cancer four weeks before the story begins. His parents died seven years earlier in a helicopter crash and his much older sister lives in Mumbai and they don’t have a lot to do with one another. After their parents died, Ian and Andrew became even closer and losing Ian feels like he has nothing left to lose.

Andrew has just graduated from law school and is supposed to be studying for the bar exam but he can’t focus. He’s started taking the occasional Vicodin to get through the day. He’s definitely in self-destruct mode.

Three years earlier, when they were both 22, Andrew had a summer fling with Holland St. James. Holland and Andrew grew up together – not close; they saw each other a couple of times a year, but as they grew so did their attraction. After their undergrad they were both in the same place at the same time for the summer and they finally let that attraction have free rein. Holland was leaving for nursing school in Japan in the autumn, when Andrew was starting law school in Los Angeles. They decided to have fun and did not intend to fall in love but it was hopeless. However, they had to part at the end of the summer because there was no reasonable way to make a long-distance relationship work.

Holland is back in town now. She came back to LA to nurse Ian through his final month and she’s still in town, terribly concerned about Andrew.

Andrew’s and Holland’s family have a close connection to Japan, the families having met in Tokyo many years before. Ian had an apartment in Tokyo and spent a lot of time there. He also had a Japanese girlfriend, Kana, who is also the building manager. She writes to Andrew in that capacity expressing concern about some medications left in the apartment and asking for Andrew’s advice about what to do with them. It makes Andrew wonder what Ian was doing in Japan. It is unspoken but he is clearly worried that Ian “gave up” and stopped taking his medications. This both throws Andrew into a bit of tailspin but also gives him a “quest”.

Holland has just accepted a full-time nursing job in Japan. She is fluent in Japanese and English and the medical centre she will be working in caters to ex-pats and visiting business people and their families.

Andrew decides to go to Tokyo and find out what the significance is of the unused medications, the “healing tea” at a particular tea house and a prescription for a temple visit – all things mentioned in Kana’s letter. He and Holland have a month before she starts her new job and he wants to spend that time with her.

Holland does not want to be Andrew’s crutch. She loves him still but wants Andrew to process his grief in a healthy way. As much as she wants to help him, she knows there are some things Andrew will have to do for himself.

Andrew and Holland love each other all the way through this book. It isn’t really a story of courtship and falling in love, even though they do fall in love in new ways in the course of the audiobook. The main thread is about Andrew coming to grips with his brother’s death.

Joe Arden narrates the sections from Andrew’s POV – which make up probably 70% of the book and Erin Mallon narrates the parts from Holland’s.

Mr. Arden’s performance is a standout here. I’ve listened to him before and have enjoyed his work but I can’t say he was a “must-listen” narrator for me. In Unbreak My Heart, Mr. Arden shines. His use of emotion in his portrayal of Andrew is superb. There are times in the book where Andrew is near tears, where his voice wobbles in that tell-tale way and not every time this happened in the listen was it because of an overt textual cue. It was clear he was so connected to the story and Andrew’s character, he was picking up the subtext and the vibe and that kind of performance brings something amazing to an audiobook. It is one of the reasons I love this medium.

Ms. Mallon’s narration was to it’s usual standard and I enjoyed it for the most part. She does have a breathiness to the ends of words and sentences sometimes which can feel out of place and which occasionally bugs me.

There was something unusual in the narration which was a little like what occurred in Dear Aaron by Mariana Zapata (but not quite the same). Mr. Arden reads all of the characters when he’s narrating his sections and Ms. Mallon reads all of the characters when she’s performing hers, except for text message exchanges. They’re not a huge part of the story (unlike in Dear Aaron) and are interspersed through the book. When Holland texts, hers are always read by Ms. Mallon. When Andrew texts, his are always read by Mr. Arden. At first, I thought Ms. Mallon was going to read all the dialogue from female characters and Mr. Arden would read all the dialogue from male characters but this did not occur. It was a little weird. From one paragraph to the next I might hear Joe Arden speaking Holland’s lines and then Erin Mallon speaking a text from Holland and then back to Joe Arden again. It was jarring and I found it an odd production choice.

Unbreak My Heart is really a story about Andrew’s journey. There is a romance and there is a HEA but Ian casts a long shadow. I couldn’t help but feel sad that Ian was no more, notwithstanding he was a fictional character. He was such a major part of the book. And of course, Kana and he were in love and Ian died. While Andrew and Holland get their HEA, Ian and Kana did not. It made the story more poignant and reminded me to appreciate what you have when you have it.

I loved the mostly-Tokyo setting and I loved the resolution to the dilemma facing Andrew and Holland yet again – namely, they live on different continents, how can they be together? And yes, I did need tissues.

Kaetrin