Narrated by Callie Dalton & Teddy Hamilton
When I reviewed the previous book in this series, Dear Aaron, I did so in the form of a list so I decided to continue the theme here. Without further ado, I present 12 things about From Lukov with Love.
1. Jasmine Santos is the younger sister of Ruby, the heroine from Dear Aaron. She’s a 26-year-old pairs figure skater but currently without a partner as her previous one left about a year before. Apparently, she has a bit of a bad reputation within skating and no-one wants to skate with her. It seemed to me that her bad reputation is about her being outspoken, single-minded and fierce rather than her actually being awful.
2. Jasmine’s best friend is Karina Lukov, the younger sister of Ivan Lukov, a world- and Olympic-champion pairs figure skater. Jasmine and Ivan have known each other a long time, courtesy of Jasmine’s friendship with Karina. Added to that, Jasmine trains at the Lukov Centre in Houston, so she and Ivan cross each other’s paths regularly. They do not get along. They talk smack to each other at every opportunity. It is pretty juvenile and belies their years (he is nearly 30). I said in Dear Aaron that Ruby and Aaron both felt a lot younger than they were stated to be. The same is true here. The snark they engaged in felt very immature.
3. Jasmine is half Filipina, courtesy of her dad, but disappointingly, apart from one brief mention in the book there was exactly nothing about her culture, heritage or her ethnicity.
4. As the book commences, Ivan and his coach ask Jasmine to partner up for the next year, as Ivan’s previous partner is taking a year off. The Santos/Lukov team is only going to be for one year but as Ivan is a proven winner and Jasmine is currently unable to compete at all because she has no partner, it’s a good deal for her. So, even though they don’t get along, she accepts.
5. As with most (all?) Mariana Zapata books, the romance is a very (very) slow burn. At the start, Jasmine’s and Ivan’s interactions felt mean but over time, a different quality entered and it morphed into affectionate bickering. This is very much in keeping with how the Santos family interact with one another and as that was explored I became more comfortable with how Ivan and Jasmine were together.
6. Callie Dalton does almost all of the narration. The story is told entirely from Jasmine’s point of view. Teddy Hamilton narrates almost all of Ivan’s dialogue. It felt like an odd choice. And I say “almost all” because there’s a brief chapter late in the book where Callie Dalton narrates Ivan’s part too and I can’t for the life of me tell you why. Ms. Dalton also narrates all of the other male cast members. Mr. Hamilton only speaks Ivan’s lines, no-one else’s. He was tragically underutilised.
7. My problem with this kind of narration style is that the actual performances are most often done in separate recording studios (often home studios) with different equipment, and then edited together later. To my ear, Mr. Hamilton’s lines had a completely different sound quality to them. Not an echo but… something different acoustically. For the most part it did not sound like they were in the same room when Jasmine and Ivan were conversing. The effect was reduced a little when there was a lengthy conversation but in the early parts of the book, Ivan’s lines are sparse indeed and it just sounded odd to me.
8. Not only is the romance slow, the pacing is too. The beginning section felt almost glacial. There was one bit where I Jasmine came home and vacillated over telling her family she had been asked to skate with Ivan. She was still going 40 minutes later. I wanted things to speed up a little.
9. I was happy to find out that my suspicions about what might be going on with Mindy (Ivan’s previous partner) were unfounded and there are no awful skeletons in Ivan’s closet. Rather, the surprises are all of the fun and/or cute kind.
10. At one point in the story, Jasmine and Ivan do a (mostly) naked skating photo shoot for the “Anatomy” issue of “Sports Documented” – Jasmine has tape over her nipples but is bare otherwise apart from her skates and my mind completely boggled at the concept of some of the lifts pairs figure skaters do, particularly involving things that look like the splits. Also: cold!
11. I enjoy Callie Dalton’s narration and Teddy Hamilton’s but the performance here didn’t feel all that cohesive. As the audiobook progressed and I started to hear the love connection between Jasmine and Ivan, I got into the zone but it took about to the halfway point for the story to become compelling to me. The second half of the book did grab me though.
12. From Lukov with Love was no Kulti (still my favourite) but I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would given the tortuously slow start and not-my-favourite use of dual narrators.
Kaetrin
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