Hoarse, hoarsely, hoarsest.

There are trope filled stories that are well done and then there are books like this one.

First, Joel Leslie. As of late I cannot seem to get away from him. As a rule, Leslie is a thoughtful and dependable narrator who navigates a wide range of accents and dialects and is amazing with women’s voices. Children not as much, and in this case Billy was very much an exaggerated little kid voice. The voice used for Asa is one he uses often and I find it a bit much, the timbre makes me think he is being squeezed while speaking. But overall, he’s quite listenable and certainly doesn’t hurt anything.

The storyline is as suitable as any, but Morton’s ham handed approach made it a slog of a listen. I offer this genre a lot of leeway. What I cannot tolerate is lazy writing. Does Morton not realize how often she uses the word “hoarse” when describing Asa’s statements? Then she makes Jude’s story a combination of unnecessarily complicated and at the same time unbelievable. Nothing about his modeling career rings true. Asa’s story is more believable which makes Jude’s story not only more irritatingly fake – but he could be in a different book. This story would also have been better served as a moderate angst rather than a very forced page 180 crisis, which is very much not a crisis.