Narrated by Kale Williams
Crashing Upwards is a fairly low-drama romance by a new-to-me author, and I picked up the audio to review partly because some of my online friends enjoyed the book, partly because it’s a LAMBDA award winner, and partly because Kale Williams is narrating. I suspect that the award-winner status raised my expectations somewhat, because while the story is engaging enough, it doesn’t really have anything new to offer, and the characters, while likeable, are nothing I haven’t read or listened to before.
That said, the way the two protagonists meet IS unusual. I can’t call it a meet-cute, not when Sam Foster hits Harper Jones with his car, knocks him off his bike and lands him in hospital. Harper regains consciousness to find an unfamiliar man sitting by his hospital bed, apologising and telling him that he’ll take care of him and that his father will pay for a new bike and whatever else he needs. As Harper gradually starts to get a clearer picture of what’s happened, he understands that the man – who introduces himself as Sam Foster – is apologising for hitting him with his car and telling him not to worry about the medical bills or, indeed, about anything because he’ll deal with it all. Harper, who has supported himself since he was sixteen and now earns his living as a bike messenger, can’t NOT worry – about the bills, about his job, about making the rent – so being told he shouldn’t isn’t exactly helping.
Sam works for his father, a moderate Republican senator who is running for re-election. Born into wealth and privilege, Sam is a glass-half-full kinda guy and is dedicated to helping those less fortunate, spending a lot of his spare time doing charity work. Sam works hard for the campaign, even going so far as to hide his sexuality so as not to rock the boat with some of his father’s biggest donors, but is growing increasingly frustrated at his father’s refusal to discuss the fact that he’s tired of living a lie and wants to come out.
Sam has been crushing on Harper for a while, having seen him around a few times when he’s made deliveries to the campaign offices, and he’s determined to make sure Harper has everything he needs for his recovery. Harper is highly sceptical – Sam seems too good to be true – but he’s also been alone for most of his adult life and has learned that the only person he can rely on is himself, so he finds it difficult to accept help or to admit that he needs it. But when he’s discharged just a day after the accident (which made no sense to me – he was badly banged up, couldn’t walk unaided, wouldn’t really be able to look after himself, and as far as the staff knew at the time lived alone – yet they were going to send him home without even assessing his ability to take care of himself?) he has no alternative but to accept Sam’s offer of help, which involves Sam basically moving in with him until such time as Harper is properly on the mend.
Crashing Upwards is a simple (perhaps even under-developed) story with very little conflict or obstacles in the way of the romance. Based on what the synopsis says about Sam’s father (who believes that Harper is out to milk Sam for every penny he can get) being prepared to do whatever it takes to get his son away from Harper, I’d expected a bit of suspense – for instance, when Harper’s apartment is destroyed in a fire, I thought that maybe there was some nefarious plot afoot, but no; it was just a way for the author to make it necessary for Harper to move into Sam’s house. I also found Sam’s insistence on paying for absolutely everything to be a bit over the top – and even creepy. I get that he felt really guilty for injuring Harper in the first place, but his continued refrain of “let me pay for this – it’s my fault you’re injured” actually made me uncomfortable after a while; given Harper had no alternative after his apartment burned down leaving him with nothing but the clothes on his back, it seemed manipulative and Sam kept overriding Harper’s protests and denying him his independence. (Had I not known in advance this was a romance, I’d have been waiting for the big reveal where Sam is a crazy stalker insinuating himself into Harper’s life!)
The writing is… okay, but there’s not a lot of plot here, and what there is, is repetitive, basically consisting of Sam telling Harper he’ll take care of him, Harper telling him no, Sam not taking no for an answer and Harper telling him why they can’t be together – rinse – repeat. And that repetitiveness in the plot is echoed in the writing with a number of heavily re-used words and phrases (something I tend to notice more in audio than I do in print.) Characters “chuff” a lot – as in “he chuffed” – which I’m guessing is something like a snort or a huff? (Although in the UK it can also mean fart). And people “bug” their eyes frequently – so much that I wondered if any of them were going to end up with eye strain.
As I said at the beginning, one of the reasons I chose to review Crashing Upwards was Kale Williams – but while his smooth, attractive voice did manage to get me past the worst of the repetitions and lack of plot and character development, even a really good narrator can’t save a mediocre book. There are only a handful of secondary characters in the story, which include Sam’s parents, Harper’s long-lost sister and his jackass boss; Mr. Williams characterises them all well and differentiates effectively between all of them and the two principals – although at times, Sam and Harper sounded very similar and I’m not sure I could have always worked out which was which had it not been for the dialogue tags. The performance is well-paced and expressive; I just wish Mr. Williams had been given better material to work with.
As is obvious, I can’t give Crashing Upwards a ringing endorsement; the narration is good, but the story just didn’t work for me. S.C. Wynne has an extensive back catalogue in print and a few other titles available in audio, so I may give their work another try at some point.
Caz
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