Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Narrated by Sarah Mollo-Christensen

Honestly, I thought Weather Girl was a Rom Com, one of my favorite micro-genres. The praise on the Penguin Audio website uses such phrases as “tender, hilarious” and “perfect storm of classic rom-com delights”. The author herself writes in the print preface that it’s “a romantic comedy with a depressed protagonist”. In reality, the underlying theme of mental illness is dark. The heroine, Ari, is a TV meteorologist and her public persona tries very hard to be sunny all the time. She’s a true weather/natural phenomena nerd and loves to see eclipses and walk in the rain. But she’s keeping a secret from her viewers – she and her mother both suffer from crippling depression. Her recent engagement is ended at the beginning of the story, because the former fiancé doesn’t feel she shows even him her “real” side. Her insecurities are overwhelming and her internal monologue is crushing. She is a freaking mess. The author’s notes say she wanted to present a neurodiverse heroine falling in love, showing the “messy, heavy parts of her life”. She succeeds with the messy and heavy – but it never rises to “comedy” in my opinion. So maybe it’s me, not her.

At her job, Ari has always looked up to her boss, the head meteorologist whose ex-husband also works at their TV station. The bosses have an icy relationship and the former husband often pulls passive aggressive stunts in the office to put his ex-wife down, which creates a very hostile work environment for everyone at the station. Ari always thought her boss would mentor her, but she hasn’t even had a performance review much less any mentorship. She and her co-worker Russell decide to see if they can improve office life by getting the two enemies back together, a la The Parent Trap, so they scheme ways to get them to do things together. Therein lie the few funny moments – learning that the fighting couple likes to go swing dancing and enjoys banjo and glockenspiel bands, for instance. On that journey, Ari and Russell develop a relationship. But really, Ari is such a mess, it’s a bomb waiting to explode. When it does, I had anticipated it, so it wasn’t a big shock; it was just another example of Ari’s insecurities, causing her to react in ways someone with more than an ounce of confidence would not.

The narrator is Sarah Mollo-Christensen. You might recognize her voice from other books using a different name, but I don’t know her reason for using a pseudonym (here or in other books, not sure which), so I won’t reveal it. In this book, her Eeyore-esque, self-deprecating delivery of Ari just got on my last nerve and did nothing to enhance the “romantic comedy” aspects of the story. She uses a sort of “tick” of a breath at the end of dialog that came out like an embarrassed, self-conscious half-laugh Ari (and sometimes Russell) would do after pretty much everything they said. It’s cringe-worthy and made me uncomfortable every time, which is not an emotion I expect to feel from a Rom-Com. I assume she did that sound/laugh on purpose, an acting choice to convey awkwardness, since it wasn’t at the end of every sentence. Other than her Ari voice, she’s a good voice actor. She has a really great talent for differentiating characters and her male voices are suitably lower in register. She does a good job with the pre-teen in the story and also with the few younger kids. Her voices for the two bosses are well done and easily distinguished from other characters. But that whiny, insecure voice for Ari was never-endingly annoying. And that may be why I never got the “comedy” vibe from the story.

If reading about neurodiverse characters intrigues you, you may find the story more satisfying than I did. The author’s treatment of mental illness, as well as a few other subjects she tackles, is all done with sensitivity. There’s a complete, joyous HEA for both couples, so in spite of Audible calling it Women’s Fiction, it fits the Romance genre with a capital R. This isn’t a spoiler – it’s reassurance you will experience a happy ending for them all, which is what attracts so many people to romance.

Melinda