Hayden Stone (2)

I mean, I wanted to like it more. The narrator was self-effacing in a way that was charming when it wasn't forced. The love interest was charming and loving and confident until suddenly he wasn't. There was frequent hot sex. But the plot was really bad: the conflict was static and repetitive and the stakes either were overstated or suddenly ignored. Blake's character has a huge inconsistency that is manufactured for the sake of plot. I don't mind implausibility and inconsistency if the story is entertaining, but the implausibilities were exactly what took away from any pleasure.… (mehr)

I'm trying to get to know my audiobook authors better so I've just done a search for Hayden Stone. There's only one bio paragraph and it is repeated in the usual places of Goodreads, Amazon, etc - it seems to have originated from Stone's Instagram. In other words, there's next to nothing about him, except that he's a him.

This is his second book. And if I'm not mistaken I think I started his other book, as I go for anything with 'snow' in the title. Now that I've learned that When London Snow Falls is by the same author, I'm not surprised.

There is the same pessimistic vibe. The lead here, Aubrey Barnes, is such a curmudgeon! never mind that there is a slow reveal that the grumpy bookshop owner has a dragon tattoo and a nose piercing.

The book is written in the first person from Aubrey's persective and (at halfway through the audiobook) I'm getting a bit tired of his surliness overlaying low self esteem. He has that biting and delectable British wit, but he's a bit boorish with it. The novel could do with some more air time for the easy going Blake Sinclair, an American actor in a romcom movie that is being filmed in and near Aubrey's bookshop. I can offer the good news that Aubrey loses some of his negativity as he falls for Blake, but when he jumped on a plane to go find Blake in NYC, it seemed such an unlikely turn of events for his character that I couldn't enjoy it fully.

In my search, I saw mention of the novel as a 'queer twist on Notting Hill' and of course the same thought had occurred to me. I didn't find that a plus - not keen on the reworking - with a twist - of well-known novels/movies. Give me a fresh idea...… (mehr)

I dipped into this one a few times and missed big sections of the audiobook - which is rare for me - so I won't so more than I suspect this was pretty good!

I haven't read anything by this author, Hayden Stone, before so I should try again with another book.

And I don't think I've heard the narrator, Dan Calley, before, and I kept thinking he wasn't doing the book any favours. I blame him in part for my ability to stick with the book when I went back to replay the parts I'd missed.

Maybe I need to become more familiar with the story and who Charlie, the under-pressure student, was, as that could have explained the way Dan Calley approached this book. But I found his style of reading was just that, more like reading, and a bit one-note and sing-songy. Narrating is a very particular skill, and it isn't reading.… (mehr)