Narrated by Joe Arden & Andi Arndt
I find Lauren Blakely books reliably good listens and Unzipped was no exception. She attracts some of the best narrators in contemporary romance and there’s always something fun and quirky going on as well as a sexy love story with a guaranteed HEA.
Despite the title (and indeed, the cover), Unzipped isn’t as sexy as some of her other books however. There’s sex in it but this is nowhere near an erotic romance. Actually, the title refers to a song. Kyler (Tom) Sutcliffe is a cute but fairly clueless man. He’s a successful engineer; a designer of thrill rides and has a patent under his belt to do with rollercoaster safety as well. In college, he had what he thought was a fairly epic romance with a girl named Cassandra. She broke up with him and told him to come back and find her when he got his act together. Now, eight years later, he believes he’s done that and after a sign from fate, he decides to look Cassandra up and go full Lloyd Dobbler (from Say Anything) on her by way of grand gesture.
‘Their song’ was Unzipped (I think this song might be fictional – I couldn’t find it on a Google search at least), so instead of In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel, Kyler plays Unzipped from the boombox outside what he believes is Cassie’s window. Only, it’s not where she lives. It is Finley who hears Tom sing (badly) when the boombox eats the tape.
Finley is the creator and head writer for a comedy TV show which is facing the axe. She is delighted by Tom (Kyler doesn’t really like his first name and they agree she will call him by his middle name, Tom) and thinks he will be a gold mine for her muse. She offers to help Tom get Cassie back in order to spend more time with him and Tom is eager for any assistance she might give. Over the course of not very long however, Tom realises that what he was feeling for Cassie wasn’t love and what he’s found in Finley is everything he wants. And Finley falls for him too – of course.
The book is full of references to 80s movies and it’s one of the things Tom and Finley bond over. For me, a child of the 80s it was a lot of fun, as well as a walk down memory lane. I guess it may confuse younger listeners though? There are also references to all the best romcom tropes we romance lovers would be well aware of.
I love how so often the main characters in Lauren Blakely’s books have unusual careers and Unzipped was a twofer in that respect.
In some ways the story was predictable but there were some welcome surprises as well; for instance, Finley was open about getting inspiration from Tom and his quest for her TV show and it’s something he’s happy about. I had half expected it would be a source of conflict. Similarly, Tom didn’t take long to realise that he was falling for Finley. I was happy the story went that way and he didn’t just have a lightbulb moment near the end of the book.
Their romance was pretty fast but there’s an epilogue which takes place a year after they met and that helped cement the HEA for me.
I also enjoyed the bromance between Tom and his three brothers and the close relationship Finley had with her dad. There was also a sweet dog (“Mr. Dog”) for extra bonus points.
The narration by Joe Arden and Andi Arndt was to their usual high standard. One thing was a little odd to me though; when there was a text message exchange between Tom and Finley, Mr. Arden always voiced Tom’s texts and Ms. Arndt always voiced Finley’s. However, when the story was from Tom’s POV he performed all of the other dialogue and vice versa. It was only the occasional text message which was done in a different way. It wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t like the rest of the book and I couldn’t help but think it was something of an odd choice.
I expect I enjoyed the story as much as I did at least partly because of the calibre of the narration. The tale was certainly entertaining enough, easy, not-angsty, amusing and light-hearted but the performances by Joe Arden and Andi Arndt elevated Unzipped beyond what was in the text alone.
Unzipped is not a revolutionary story but it is funny and charming and sweet and sexy and I liked it.
Kaetrin
Buy Unzipped by Lauren Blakely on Amazon
