The Suite Life by Melanie Summers

The Suite Life by Melanie Summers

Narrated by Esther Wane & Matthew Lloyd Davies

I liked the idea of The Suite Life when I saw the blurb: rich young man has to get a job and learn responsibility or be permanently disinherited and along the way falls in love with a hard-working single mum from whom he rents a garage flat. Unfortunately, the bits I most wanted to hear were skipped over and for reasons which still baffle me a little, it was the heroine who was cast in the role as villain (or, at least, the more problematic of the pair), despite the hero being spoiled, indolent and excessively privileged.

Leo Davenport is the 27-year-old son of an aristocratic family from the fictional country of Avonia. He is spending some time with his brother on the (also fictional as best I can tell) Caribbean island of San Felipe, when he gets the bad news that his father, incensed by Leo’s latest faux pas, has assigned a former parole officer to watch him for six months, during which time he must get a job and not quit or be fired, stop drinking and stop womanising. If he fails, he will be permanently disinherited so Leo reluctantly agrees. Via his sister-in-law, he obtains a job at the Paradise Bay resort as a lowly bellboy.

There, he meets Brianna Lewis, the night concierge. Bree is 26 and the single mum of Isabelle, aged 4. She is somewhat understandably fairly anti-men and relationships, having been burned by Izzy’s deadbeat dad, who left Bree pregnant and alone. Bree is working evenings and studying to become a barrister, as well as trying to parent her daughter. She’s exhausted and running on fumes and, to top it all off, she is broke. Inspired to rent out the garage as a flat (it has plumbing), she ends up renting it to Leo. Thus begins their journey to their HEA.

I was expecting a lot of the story to be devoted to Leo learning how to do things and learning to take responsibility and grow to like it. And there was a little of that – just nowhere near enough. The plot skips forward a month after his first day or two on the job and then, after she has a falling out with her sister, Amber (who is getting married to a man Bree disapproves of), Bree and Leo have a day out together where things almost turn romantic until the arrival on scene of his “parole officer”. And then the book skips forward again – this time for three months!!  I imagine within that three months Leo did all the learning and growing I wanted him to do. But I didn’t see any of it. Given his excessive privilege, for me to really embrace him as a romance hero, I needed to SEE his growth. Honestly, it wasn’t even told all that much, let alone shown.

Bree is presented as uptight and judgemental and for this, her character is pilloried. I took it as authorial choice rather than organic. There was plenty of story available for Leo to grow and Bree to gradually see him as a good man and partner material but instead, a lot of the book was taken up with Bree’s family woes and her rocky relationship with her sister, all of which left her looking unsympathetic.

There were a few continuity errors in addition to the timeline jumping; the latter felt very strange in relation to Bree and her sister. I could not understand why Bree, who is apparently to be her sister’s maid of honour, would fight with Amber and then not communicate with her at all for over three months. It made no sense. At least, not if Bree remained in the wedding party.

The narration was better than the story and it was what kept me listening. I particularly enjoyed Esther Wane’s performance. I stumbled across her narrations fairly recently (alas, in another book I did not like all that much) and was impressed. In fact, it was the narrator paring of her and Matthew Lloyd Davies which convinced me to pick the book up in the first place, as I have not read or listened to this author before.

Matthew Lloyd Davies is a very experienced and talented narrator. He’s particularly good with the aristocratic British accent. He was very convincing as Leo. Unfortunately, his female character voices were not very different and so there were times when, during a conversation between Leo and Bree, I could not tell who was saying what. It was not always immediately apparent from the context either.

Esther Wane had the advantage of vocal differentiation between characters; her Leo was different enough from Bree and others that I was never confused during the sections from her point of view.

Otherwise, the narration from both was very good, in terms of pacing, tone and emotion. It was just that the story didn’t really grab me.

Kaetrin


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