N.R. Walker’s books, to me, are all just SO CLOSE to being great, and this one is no exception. However, they are also deeply flawed, and again this one is a good example. The basic plot outline is great–a combination of two tropes: switched-at-birth and friends-to-lovers. And both are well done; the switched-at-birth doesn’t seem at all outlandish and Walker does an amazing job establishing Israel and Sam as best friends long before they become anything more.
However: Israel is very, very unlikable, at least to me. He’s had some bad knocks in life, but he constantly makes himself into a martyr, and he also bursts into tears at the least provocation. He comes across as brittle and maudlin, which is not a pleasant combination. Does he deserve a little leeway because of his difficult childhood and his uncaring parents? Yes, definitely. However, the problem lies in that almost all of the difficulty, and almost everything “bad” his parents do takes place long before the novel starts. Honestly his father doesn’t even seem like a very bad guy for much of the novel. In fact, almost every time he makes an appearance, Israel is “stunned” at how nice his father is acting. I get that it’s all apparently new, but since it happens from almost the very beginning of the novel, it’s not new to the reader, and it just makes Israel seem like he has some sort of selective amnesia or something. I sort of cringed every time he had one of his breakdowns and said something particularly hurtful to his father.
And he has a LOT of breakdowns. He’s constantly falling apart and yelling at everyone around him. And every time it happens, it’s preceded by some variation of the phrase “the dam burst” or “the floodgates opened” or something like that. By the end of the novel, you could have flooded the entire Eastern seaboard with how many times it happened. Again, like his father acting vulnerable or kind, I think we’re meant to believe that this is a new development in Israel’s life; however, because it happens constantly throughout the book, I was tired of it happening by about the midway point.
Long-suffering Sam, the love interest, is a different story. Genuinely kind and noble, he doesn’t deserve the overwrought boyfriend he ends up with. I’d gladly read a book about Sam ending up with someone who is genuinely going to make him happy. Israel starts seeing a psychologist (or maybe a psychiatrist, I forget) at some point, and it’s the best decision he ever made. I just can’t bring myself to enjoy reading about someone who is just such a useless emotional wreck as he is.
Joel Leslie is a good narrator, but I’m not part of his fan club. His Australian accent is good but whenever he speaks with any accent, a lot of his sentences end up having the same cadence and this book is no exception. He also tends to sound melodramatic here but I’ll give him a pass since Israel is a genuinely melodramatic person.
Anyway the writing is great, like all N.R. Walker books. However, I’m just never able to really say I LOVE any of her books except the Thomas Elkin series. I keep buying more of them because I know she’s capable of being a great writer, there’s just always a pillar in the way for me.