I liked it a bit, but critical scenes are missing at the beginning. The leads went from distrusting each other to damn near serenading each other from rooftops over the course of a few pages, and there are nowhere near enough moments between them to justify this shift. I needed to see them warm up to each other, but it’s skipped over. This makes all their declarations and private moments feel forced and hollow. It feels as if the author already understood how they became close and simply forgot to inform the reader how it happens. The romantic scenes are written beautifully, so they could have been extremely powerful if there had just been some foundation for it laid early on. Alas, the foundation isn’t there, so the beautiful words have very little impact. Those early missing chapters ruin the book, honestly.
The writing is strong in all aspects except the main plot (Philip and Ben’s love), so it’s still an enjoyable read/listen. Everything fit logically into the time period and setting. The rambunctious children are a delight, and I rarely enjoy child characters. Philip and Ben’s intimate scenes are beautiful. The two men have distinct personalities and voices. Philip’s continuous nautical references are a bit tiring, but I found it humorous by the end. The subplots are a model of perfection. The connection between Philip and his son, Ben’s issues with his father, and even the “villainous” neighbor’s role are all artfully woven into the book. Because of all this, I recommend this book so long as you can suspend disbelief around the leads’ baffling insta-love.
But… read it, don’t get the audiobook.
The narration almost entirely destroyed my ability to enjoy anything at all about this book. The narrator is fantastically skilled but was the entirely wrong choice for this book. He delivered the entire novel in a stiff, almost snobbish tone completely at odds with the written words. This caused scenes meant to be humorous or light to sound far too serious. At one point, we’re introduced to a new character who immediately starts slinging insults at Ben, and I prepped for drama. After a moment, I realized he WASN’T slinging insults at all, instead engaging in a teasing banter, and the narrator had delivered the dialogue in such an inaccurate tone that this was lost. Moments like that happened over and over. I could only tell when we switched between Philip and Ben’s POV by context clues, never the narrator’s shift in delivery. I had to pause the audiobook multiple times out of irritation at the breathing and inhaling the narrator did directly into the mic, especially during dramatic scenes. The more dramatic the scene, the less breath control the narrator had.
The worst of it, however, is how Philip is voiced. I cannot imagine a single soul believing this voice is a fitting portrayal. Philip is our 35-year-old naval captain physically fit enough to withstand commanding a ship at sea (and sexy enough to instantly tempt the local vicar), yet he’s voiced as if he’s a 70-year-old man wheezing out his last breath after a lifetime of pipe-smoking. The hideous rasping makes no sense at all for such a young man. I had to stop and relisten to the beginning a few times because at first, I kept mistaking Philip’s dialogue as some elderly man entering a scene. The narrator’s ability to create a voice like this is impressive and will be useful in a lot of stories, but it’s misplaced in the lead of a romance novel. He’s not a monotone or stumbling narrator; on the contrary, he’s lively and able to create a huge range of voices across ages and genders, which makes him a fantastic narrator in the grand scheme of things. He’s just a poor fit for this book.