When Harry Met Harry by Sydney Smyth

Narrated by Teddy Hamilton and Malcolm Young

Before I get into this review, I have to say this.

PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST STOP PUTTING SNIPPETS OF MUSIC BETWEEN CHAPTERS. IT’S NOT CUTE, IT’S NOT SOOTHING – IT’S ANNOYING AS HELL!

Right. So.

I stumbled across When Harry Met Harry a few weeks ago when I was looking through the Coming Soon titles at Audible, and the obvious reference in the title to what is probably my favourite Rom-Com ever immediately caught my eye. Plus – Teddy Hamilton.

Harrison Fields and Henry Lee meet for the first time at an airport in Singapore when aspiring actor Harrison is going back to the US after spending a few months travelling the world, and workaholic Henry is going to the US to pursue a business opportunity he hopes will enable him to break out from beneath his real estate magnate father’s shadow. A mix up with tickets means that Henry ends up sitting next to Harrison for the whole of the eighteen-hour flight and neither is particularly impressed with the other. Harrison thinks Henry is starchy and cynical; Henry thinks Harrison is overly optimistic and tends to overshare. At some point in the few conversations they have, Henry says he doesn’t believe in love, and also states his conviction that gay men can never be friends because the sex thing always gets in the way. After arriving, they say polite goodbyes and go their separate ways.

Five years later finds Harrison having abandoned his acting career in favour of a post as director of a children’s musical theatre group. He loves his job and is very good at it – but on this particular afternoon is being driven up the wall by the constant noise coming from the building next door which is disrupting that day’s rehearsal. When the kids have left, he and his assistant, Christopher, go into the building looking to speak to someone about the noise, and when they’re escorted to the office, Harrison is stunned to see none other than Henry Lee behind the desk and obviously in charge. He shows no sign of recognising Harrison at all – which Harrison is unaccountably put-out by – but listens to their complaints and asks for their rehearsal schedule.

The next morning, Harrison is surprised to see Henry in his favourite coffee shop, and even more surprised when the other man apologises for not acknowledging him. After this, they start meeting up for coffee regularly and a tentative friendship develops which, over the next year or so becomes a much more tangible relationship based on mutual liking and shared interests.

The story proceeds as you’d expect, and hits most of the same notes as the movie; the two besties who become a couple, a surprisingly enjoyable outing to an art exhibition (instead of a museum) and various other familiar stops along the way (There’s no “I’ll have what she’s having” moment, sadly). I enjoyed the way début author Sydney Smyth develops the friendship between these two very different men, but for something dubbed a Rom Com there’s no “Com”, and there’s not much “Rom” either; there is so little romantic chemistry between the two Harrys that when the story does at last turn romantic, it’s not very convincing. There’s no real sense that they’re attracted to each other – I don’t like overdone mental lusting in romances, but other than an acknowledgement on both sides that the other is good-looking, there’s nothing to show that they fancy one another; and while I like a slow burn, the author hasn’t quite grasped the meaning of the term. She’s got the hang of the “slow”, but the “burn” is largely absent. As in the movie, the turning point comes after Harrison realises that his ex-fiancé had never intended to get married, or rather, get married to him – and falls into bed with Henry, who legs it at the earliest opportunity after their night of passion (which, by the way, is fade-to-black). He then ghosts Harrison for weeks and is a complete arsehole (the New Year’s Eve reunion and declaration don’t happen here). Because of the lack of chemistry or any discernible attraction between them, I couldn’t help wanting Harrison to move on and find someone who really deserved him, because he’s a lovely guy with a lot to offer.

The narration is a mixed-bag, too. Teddy Hamilton’s work is a stranger to exactly no-one around here; we’re big fans of his at AG, and his name attached to an audiobook is guaranteed to make me look twice. The story is told in alternate third person PoVs, with Mr. Hamilton reading Harrison’s chapters and new-to-me narrator Malcolm Young reading Henry’s, but I have to wonder why, given this is a third person narration, the producers bothered with a second narrator at all. Mr Young isn’t terrible by any means, but both narrators portray the same cast members (so it wasn’t as if they each had to voice a different set of characters), and there were some discrepancies between the two performances – most noticeably, Mr. Hamilton portrays Harrison’s friend Christopher at a low pitch, while Mr. Young does the opposite – which could have been eliminated by using only one performer (and which should have been spotted in post-production and fixed). The star-turn is Mr. Hamilton’s portrayal of Harrison, his gentle, laid-back delivery and the smile in his voice perfect for the character’s optimistic, happy-go-lucky nature and his particular brand of gentle snark. Mr. Young differentiates effectively between the leads, although there were places I had to rely on dialogue tags, but the biggest problem with his part of the narration was the sound quality which is utterly DREADFUL. I don’t know how it got past the editors and producers, but it sounds as though he recorded his portions in a high-ceilinged bathroom. It’s tinny and treble-y, there’s a degree of “background noise”, and the drop-ins (when a narrator/editor inserts a newly recorded section to replace one containing errors) are ridiculously easy to spot because the sound quality changes. The difference when shifting from a section from Harrison’s PoV to one in Henry’s is incredibly jarring, and frankly, I expect better than this from a professionally produced audiobook. I could have done better with an old tape recorder from the 1980s.

In addition to my opening rant about music in audiobooks, here’s another pet peeve. In stories with two narrators, authors generally preface chapters/sections with the name of the character who is narrating at that point, which is completely unnecessary in a dual narration, becasue it’s obvious who’s speaking. I suspect the ‘tags’ are included because it’s an accurate reflection of what’s in the text.  In this book, however, I found that practice even more annoying than usual, because the character name is included even when there isn’t a change of PoV. So, when Harrison/Harry narrates a section, then pauses and goes on to narrate the next section, HE SAYS HIS NAME AT THE BEGINNING OF IT. WHY?! There hasn’t been a change of PoV, and my ears can tell me who is speaking – I don’t need to keep hearing the character’s name! It was completely pointless and profoundly annoying.

Okay. So Ranty McRantypants has left the room, but I imagine it’s obvious I can’t recommend When Harry Met Harry. Attempting a re-telling of a classic of any genre is a tricky undertaking, but some authors make it work and others… not so much. This one started well, but once the lack of chemistry became really apparent, it got bogged down and, dare I say it, I got bored waiting for something to happen, for some sign that these two were actually meant to be together. I’ve given separate narration grades, and the one I’ve given for Mr. Young reflects the production issues I’ve mentioned. I loved the idea of an m/m version of When Harry Met Sally, but sadly When Harry Met Harry doesn’t deliver either on the romance or the comedy.

Caz