Narrated by: Sebastian York, Andi Arndt, Joe Arden, Savannah Peachwood, Julia Whelan, RC Bray, Erin Mallon, Dion Graham, January LaVoy, Shane East, Jason Clarke & Robin Miles
I love how Lauren Blakely is doing different things in the audiobook space. Birthday Suit is a multi-narrator recording with 12 different performers, voicing 2 main and 11 secondary characters. It was an ambitious project but it looks like everyone had a lot of fun with it. How do I know? There are YouTube videos! (Start here.) Alas, there are no pictures of Sebastian York or Joe Arden so our curiosity remains unappeased, and Shane East wasn’t in the videos – I gather he recorded his sections away from New York?
The story itself is fairly simple. Lulu met Leo in college. Leo’s best friend was Tripp and the trio formed a tight bond. However, it was Tripp that made the romantic move first and Leo’s love for Lulu remained unrequited and silent. Refreshingly, Leo didn’t pine away the whole time – he did his best to “get over it” and succeeded for a time, including having various other relationships and even getting engaged to a woman he loved (but then they split up).
Tripp and Lulu married but Tripp was an alcoholic and things ended tragically.
Now, some years later, Lulu is back in New York pursuing her career as a chocolatier. Leo is in a similar business, doing the wheeling and dealing. The company Leo works for has a kind of artist-in-residence program and Lulu is selected to be the Rising Star and create a boutique line of chocolates for them, boosting both business profiles.
I could say that as they work together Leo’s old feelings for Lulu return and Lulu sees Leo in a different light and that is true as far as it goes, but it happens much faster than that. They know each other well and have history. The feelings are not far below the surface and this time there is no impediment to a relationship. Well, not apart from Leo’s guilt about moving in on “his best friend’s girl”.
One of the hallmarks of Lauren Blakely books is that every main character has a unique quirk or characteristic. In Lulu’s case it is a love of riddles and for Leo it is furniture restoration and a passion for studying the geography and history of different countries – one per month. These quirks serve as wonderful entrés into the characters and differentiate them from others; Ms. Blakely is so prolific I’m grateful for this as I get the book titles all mixed up and tend to remember the stories from these character hooks.
The story was enjoyable and fun, sexy though not as steamy as some of her other books, but the best thing about it was the narration.
The broader cast is a delight. As much as I loved Sebastian York and Andi Arndt’s performances (and I did), the standout for me was Joe Arden. His character, Noah, is a hyperactive 25-year-old fitness fanatic with a massive crush on a co-worker – an Australian single mother Ginny, who at 35 initially feels she’s too old for him. Noah is kind of like an over-exuberant Labrador puppy and it’s clear that Joe Arden had a blast recording it. The format suited him well too because there was a relaxed and easy quality to his voice which really worked here. Sometimes, Mr. Arden can have a somewhat stilted delivery. I like his performances best when they sound more natural – like this one.
Erin Mallon plays Ginny and she was cursed with having to perform an Australian accent to an Australian reviewer. It wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t great either. From time to time it sounded more like a New Zealand accent, actually.
All of the rest of the cast was good – Savannah Peachwood drew the short straw, because, as RaeLynn, she was the “bitch” and had little by way of character, quirks or personality.
January LaVoy as Kingsley was smooth and wickedly sarcastic (in a good way) and Julia Whelan as Tabitha (Lulu’s mother) was wonderful too. I’m keen to listen to more of Jason Clarke as well, because his sections, as Tripp, gave the character extra nuance and sympathy.
Immediately before listening to Birthday Suit, I listened to the free novella length audio, Lucky Suit which is about Cameron (Lulu’s friend and business partner – his quirk is that he wears crocs and has a passion for Ferraris.) In Lucky Suit, Cameron is voiced by Zachary Webber so I admit to a little cognitive dissonance when I heard Dion Graham portraying him in Birthday Suit – particularly because there is an overlapping timeline (although I think the timeline is a bit fuzzy between the two books). I enjoyed both performances but it felt like something of an odd choice to use different narrators for the same character in books released so close together?
An easy camaraderie between all of the narrators was apparent and this made for a fun listen on a whole new level to the standard dual or single narrator audiobook. Of course, Sebastian York and Andi Arndt have great chemistry together but it was clear that the other narrators developed a fabulous rapport as well, making the various relationships easy to believe.
Sebastian York’s deep sexy voice was a delight as I’ve come to expect and Andi Arndt’s smooth tones are always enjoyable in my ears.
The only (slight) downside to the format of Birthday Suit was that I noticed it was extra difficult to work out when a line of dialogue was an internal thought or was something spoken aloud to someone else and this was common to all of the narrators.
I expect a production of this nature would not be cheap and this in a medium which is costly to produce in any event, but I do hope we audiobook listeners get more opportunities to hear multi-cast recordings in future because this one was so much fun!
You can find the full list of videos here!
Cast:
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- Lulu: Andi Arndt
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- Leo: Sebastian York
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- Ginny: Erin Mallon
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- George: RC Bray
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- Kingsley: January LaVoy
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- Cameron: Dion Graham
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- Dean: Shane East
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- Tripp: Jason Clarke
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- Noah: Joe Arden
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- Tabitha: Julia Whelan
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- Mariana: Robin Miles
- RaeLynn: Savannah Peachwood
- Vivian: also played by Robin Miles
Kaetrin
Buy Birthday Suit by Lauren Blakely on Amazon
