Rare by Briar Prescott

Narrated by Iggy Toma & Alexander Cendese

Rare, Briar Prescott’s second novel (after Project Hero, before The Happy List), is an emotional and heartfelt romance that falls naturally into two halves; one detailing the love story that blooms between two young men in their late teens, the other their second chance at love after a long separation. I’m generally a fan of second chance romances; I love the idea of two people who have been apart coming back together and falling in love all over again with who they are NOW rather than who they used to be – but sadly, the author doesn’t get that quite right here, and the book feels somewhat unbalanced. It’s well-written and I liked the characters, but the uneven structure doesn’t do the story any favours.

In part one, nineteen-year-old rich-kid Alex Ellison has got himself into trouble (again) and has spent the night in jail for being drunk, high and urinating in public. On a police car. His wealthy businessman father has so far managed to keep a longer-term jail sentence at bay thanks to his friendship with a local judge, but Alex’s latest escapade is the last straw. He’s given the choice between community service at an animal welfare centre in rural Oregon or being completely cut off financially. He’s so fed up with everything about his life that he can’t even be bothered to care.

Noah Price works at the North Oregon Wildlife Center and is planning to become a veterinarian, despite his mother’s opposition. In fact, Noah seems to have to face his mother’s opposition to a lot of things in his life, although we don’t learn why until much later in the story. He’s a good guy – sweet, kind and although a bit quiet, he’s well up to Alex’s weight in the snarking stakes. Alex notes the signs of interest in Noah’s eyes and is completely on board with the idea of a fling – but there’s something about Noah that draws him in more deeply, makes him want to get to know him and spend time with him – and that is so far from his usual MO, it’s not funny. Their romance is lovely; it’s sweet and charming and funny and I really liked the way they both bring out the best in each other. Alex encourages Noah to pursue his dreams and for the first time, Alex has someone around him who actually wants to be with him for no other reason than that he’s Alex; someone who isn’t going to leave him behind or push him aside, someone who sees the good and the bad and wants him anyway. As the idyllic summer continues on, Alex and Noah fall more and more deeply in love – until the day when it all falls apart and Noah disappears from Alex’s life.

The first part of the book – just over half – is told entirely from Alex’s perspective, so we get to see that his bravado is his way of pretending he doesn’t care and that he hides his insecurities behind layers of snark and indifference. However, Alex is such a big personality that not having Noah’s perspective means Noah is a bit overshadowed, and it means we don’t get to know why his mother is so overprotective or why she’s so invested in keeping him and Alex apart. (My guess, while it proved to be incorrect, was, at least, in the right ballpark!) It becomes clear exactly why the author has chosen to do this in the second half, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating!

The second part of the story skips ahead ten years, and the narrative here switches between Alex and Noah. A chance meeting when Alex is in Seattle for business (he now works for his father’s PR firm) brings them back into each other’s orbit; confessions are made, questions are answered and before long, Alex and Noah are picking up from where they left off ten years earlier. But therein lies the biggest problem with the story. Their second chance romance is underdeveloped and relies solely on their previously established connection, we’re told very little about their lives between point A and point B and there’s no sense that either man has grown or changed very much in the intervening years. Alex and Noah are good together and clearly make each other happy, but the drama crammed into the last quarter of the book feels just a tad contrived. I do, however, give the author props for addressing an important issue – one I was only vaguely aware of – through Noah’s side of the story, although I don’t really understand why Noah couldn’t have told Alex the truth earlier and spared them both the misery of a decade-long separation.

Iggy Toma and Alexander Cendese make a great narrating team and I’ve listened to quite a few of the books they’ve worked on together. Iggy Toma portrays Alex so he narrates the majority of the book, and he does a great job with Alex’s world-weary insouciance and waspish snark while also managing to convey a strong sense of the hurt and insecurity that lie beneath it. In fact, I suspect that Alex could have been a lot less likeable without the added depth Mr. Toma brings to the character. He differentiates clearly between Alex and Noah in their scenes together, and I enjoyed listening to the subtle changes in Alex as he begins to fall for Noah. The structure of the story means we only hear from Noah in the second part, and I liked Mr. Cendese’s interpretation of him. Noah is a solid, dependable guy and that sense of contentment and reliability comes through in his even tone and the steady pace of his dialogue. I admit I would have expected the narrator roles to have been reversed here because in most of the dual narrations of theirs I’ve listened to, Mr. Cendese generally voices the brash, mouthy character and Mr. Toma the quieter, more introspective one, but when you’ve got two such experienced voice actors on board, I suppose it doesn’t really matter who voices who because the end result will be a strong performance regardless.

I’m recommending Rare with the caveat that the first half works better than the second. Despite the uneven nature of the story, I enjoyed listening to it and the Alex & Iggy combo certainly makes a strong case for experiencing it in audio.

Caz

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