Audiobook Review: Well Traveled by Jen DeLuca

I’m at the point where I no longer classify romance novels I listen to while working out as guilty pleasure — I’ve decided that for this year, I will enjoy them without the guilt.

So, when Jen DeLuca published another entry in her rom-com set at Renaissance Fairs, I put it on reserve on Libby and was pleasantly surprised when it quickly arrived. It was then I realized that I’d had last year’s installment in my to-be-read/listened-to list for a while — and that I’d have to skip it (for now) to enjoy Well Traveled. And while my inner continuity self balked at this decision, it did not make a huge difference in the overall scheme of things. DeLuca’s novels are self-contained and while they may feature characters from previous novels, not knowing every nuance of the previous three stories won’t necessarily hurt here.

After the first three novels in the series were set in Maryland, the fourth installment casts a wider net for it setting. Louisa Malone (better known as Lulu) is a driven, high-powered attorney who has been chasing the partner ring for years now. Watching as lesser qualified candidates get her shot at partner and frustrated by the long hours for what feels like little reward, Lulu quits her job while visiting a North Carolina Ren Faire, memorably drowning her cell phone in the wash tub of one of the acts.

But instead of immediately jumping into the job-search mode, Lulu decides to take some time off to decompress and figure out her next steps — and that’s where The Dueling Kilts enters the picture. Lulu (through her cousin from previous novels) arranges to be part of the traveling singing group for a few months and embraces living off the grid for the summer. While Lulu attempts to gain some clarity and perspective, she begins to notice Dex, the guitar player for the group who is a bit of a lady’s man on the Ren Fair circuit. (Dex was featured in the second novel in the series).

But is there more to Dex than just the guy with a girl in every Ren Fair?

As with previous installments in the series, DeLuca’s characters are on-point in Well Traveled. It’s a nice change of pace to see DeLuca expand the world of her Ren Faire romcoms a bit with this installment. And while I was rooting for a happy ending for Dex and Lulu, I can’t help but feel that perhaps romcoms at the Ren Fair are starting to lose a bit of their steam (pun kind of intended here). Yes, the growing attraction is well-handled and there are plenty of legitimate obstacles for our couple to overcome (thankfully, both parties act like adults for the most part, discussing things and not just ignoring them until they become seemingly insurmountable speed bumps), but there were moments where the setting felt a bit too familiar.

Obviously, I have enjoyed DeLuca’s work (I’ve read three of her four novels at this point), but there was part of me that wondered if it might not be time for DeLuca to take a page from Lulu and get out of her comfort zone. I’m hoping her next novel might see her find a different setting or set of circumstances for her characters to meet and fall in love. I think stretching her wings a bit for her next novel would be a welcome change for this reader/listener.

Audiobook Review: Along Came Holly by Codi Hall

At the end of There’s Something About Merry last year, I noted the potential for a novel centering on Holly Winters and Decklan Gallagher. For this holiday season’s visit to Mistletoe, Codi Hall grants that particular wish.

For two years, Holly and Decklan had feuded over their shared store wall and the decibel level of her holiday music. Holly embraces everything about the holiday season, while Decklan seems a bit like the Grinch.

As with her previous novels, Hall alternates perspectives between Holly and Decklan, allowing us to see each party’s reasons for embracing or not embracing the holiday season. Decklan has good reasons for not loving the holidays, centering on his mother leaving town as soon as he graduated high school and him making assumptions about the demise of his parent’s relationship.

Like the first two entries in this series, the attraction between the two leads is apparent early and often, though circumstances keep putting up natural barriers from pursuing something more too soon. However, as each side admits there is more to their rivalry and the series of pranks they begin to pull on each other, Hall tugs gently on the heartstrings and makes you root for these two crazy kids to get together.

And while you can see where Holly and Decklan are headed, Hall still puts a few natural speed bumps along the way. As with previous installments in this series, the speed bumps are effective without being overly cliched and (thankfully) don’t entirely derail the growing romance between the two.

Brimming with characters from the past two novels, the story is a warm one that provides just the right blend of holiday cheer. It never gets overly smarmy and I looked forward to each time I could come back and listen to the audiobook during my workouts. At this point, I am willing to spend as many holidays in Mistletoe as Hall is willing to bestow upon us. And while all three Winters’ siblings have found their happy ending, there are still some other characters who might enjoy a happy ending as well.

The audio version of this was well done, though I will admit it took me a chapter to really connect with Skyler Hutchinson’s performance as Decklan.

I listened to this one as part of the Audible Plus Catalog.

Audiobook Review: Doctor Who and the Nightmare of Eden by Terrance Dicks

Doctor Who‘s seventeenth season firmly divides fandom — some love it, others not so much. The stories have a lot of ambition, but it’s just not all realized by what we finally get on our screens.

It’s a season that could — and should — be helped by the Target adaptations of each story. Freed of the budget limitations and the feeling that maybe script editor Douglas Adams should have had one more pass at polishing each story before production began, these stories could have been something wonderful on the printed page. Unfortunately, this was also a period when the Target adaptations were coming out fast and furious and not allowing writer Terrance Dicks to do much more than adapt the shooting script for the printed page.

All of this brings us to “The Nightmare of Eden,” a story in which Doctor Who tries to rise above and do anti-drugs story. Except the message is fairly simplistic (“Drugs are bad”), and the story around it isn’t necessarily the greatest in the world.

Two ships collide exiting hyperspace, creating an unstable region between the two. The Doctor, Romana, and K-9 arrive on the scene and set about trying to pull the two ships apart. Also on board is Tryst, who has created a CET machine. The machine is able to capture samples of various environments in a crystal and render them on-screen for further study and to save multiple endangered species from each planet. Unfortunately, the dimensional instability leads to various creatures, including the deadly Mandril, being able to cross over from the crystal to various ships.

Throw into this chaos that someone is smuggling the deadly drug vraxoin and working hard to cover his or her tracks and you’ve got the makings of a pretty interesting story.

Except the pieces never quite add up. There are some solid sci-fi elements here and the wider implications of vraxoin and its destructive and addictive properties, but they’re never fully realized. The connection between the CET machine, the Mandrils, and the drug becomes fairly obvious early as well, thus leading to it feeling like a lot of episodes two and three is various parties running around corridors and escaping each other.

Dicks does his best given the time constraints and he does make the Mandrils a bit more intimidating on the printed page than they come across on-screen. However, this is a story that could have benefited greatly from the Dicks who gave us “Day of the Daleks” or “The Auton Invasion.” Rounding out the characters a bit would have helped a great deal, as would connecting certain scenes during the story.

The best part about the audiobook is Dan Starkey avoids the temptation to use an outrageous accent (think one of the French knights from Monty Python and the Holy Grail) that Tryst has in the story. Starkey does a nice imitation of Tom Baker and his reading of the book is nicely done. It is telling that this audiobook clocks in at just under two hours — just a hair more time than you’d spend watching the story. It shows how little time Dicks had to rush the story out and how little he embellished it.

The most praise you can heap on this one is that it’s “serviceable.” I’m always struck by the thought that Tom Baker’s era of Doctor Who is one of the most popular among fans, but it’s one of the lesser-served eras when it comes to the Target books. “The Nightmare of Eden” reinforces that feeling.

#20BooksofSummer: Birds of California by Katie Cotugno

Fiona St James was the star of one of the hottest family dramedies on TV in her younger days, until her spectacular crash and burn not only pulled the plug on her career but the series as well. A decade later, Fiona runs her parents’ printing business by day and acts under a stage name with a local theater group by night.

Fiona has little time or interest when former co-star Sam Fox shows up in her shop, hoping to convince her that starring in a relaunch of the show that made them famous would be good for both of them. Sam’s latest series has been given the axe and he’s looking for something to pay the bills and the growing mountain of debt he faces.

Against this backdrop, the two begin to reconnect and possibly become something more — something the tabloids would love to cover.

Katie Cotugano’s Birds of California takes its title from the fictional series that put Fiona and Sam on the map. The novel serves as a satisfying blend of tropes with two compelling characters that you can’t help but root for to put aside their egos and admit there is something deeper going on between them. Cotugano layers in a few interesting twists along the way about what led to Fiona’s spectacular public breakdown and implosion.

Overall, this is an entertaining story with two well-realized leads.

#20BooksofSummer: Audiobook Review: Doctor Who and the Power of Kroll by Terrance Dicks

Back in my early days of Doctor Who fandom, some friends caught a few moments of “The Power of Kroll” and incredulously mocked me because the Doctor somehow defeated a giant squid creature using a tiny stick. Of course, I tried to explain to them exactly what was happening in the scene and how it wasn’t really a tiny stick, but my pleas fell upon deaf ears and taunts about the budgetary limitations of my favorite show.

Years later, removed of the mocking jabs of my youth, I’ve come to see that “The Power of Kroll” is a rough draft for Robert Holmes’ triumphant “Caves of Androzani.” And while most fans will be quick to cry that its the scripts that make classic Who so special, the comparisons between “Androzani” and “Kroll” show sometimes there are other elements involved as well.

Pursuing the fifth segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Romana arrive on a moon of Delta Manga. A revolutionary station is processing protein from the swamp and sending it home to feed the greater population. One obstacle is a group of natives, who were displaced from Delta Magna originally and now stand in the way of full development of the small moon’s resources. Lurking in the swamp is a large creature, worshiped by the natives and known as Kroll. After some time being dormant, Kroll is on the move again — and is hungry.

Audiobook Review: Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Nora Stephens reads the last chapter of a story first. As a literary agent whose life is consumed by all things literary, Nora likes knowing where the story is going before starting the first page. Her younger sister, Libby, will not only barrel into a book without any preconceptions, often not even reading the back cover so she won’t ruin the surprises along the way. When Nora and Libby decide to spend a few weeks away from the hustle and bustle of New York City in the small town that served as a literary basis for one of Libby’s favorite books that Nora edited, their hope is to reconnect before the birth of Libby’s third child. But what they find is something else entirely unexpected.

Emily Henry’s latest novel, Book Lovers deftly deconstruction the tropes of small-town romance in a delightfully entertaining way.

If her life were a romance novel, Nora would be the heartless, big-city girlfriend who gets dumped for the small-town girl with a heart of gold. In fact, Nora has been dumped four times for that, including on her way to meet with high-profile editor Charlier Lastra. When Charlie dismisses the latest offering from her client before they place their drink orders, Nora chalks it up to being off her game due to the previous rejection and being late.

Two years later, she runs into Charlie in the small town she’s visiting with her sister, and the sparks inevitably being to fly. Things are helped when a new manuscript has Charlie and Nora teaming up as editors, bringing the two into each other’s orbit on a more regular basis.

Book Lovers is a slow dance of a story, slowly revealing layers about its characters and deconstructing the small-town romance story in an entertaining fashion. As with her previous two novels, Henry puts realistic, grounded obstacles to each of the relationships at the heart of Book Lovers. Whether it’s the secrets Charlie is holding about his family and growing up in a small town or the secret that Nora and Lilly are keeping from each other, each revelation is earned by Henry over the course of the story.

As a stand-alone story, this one succeeds on every level, offering a satisfying story. Henry sows the seeds of the eventual resolution in the story’s early goings, allowing this reader to see where things could go before some of the characters do.

An entertaining journey, Book Lovers is yet another feather in Henry’s already impressive cap. Needless to say, I will be back for whatever she offers next.

The audio version of this one is well performed by Julie Whalen, who brings June’s first-person perspective vibrantly to life. She also does a superb job of crafting all the other characters we meet in Nora’s story to life as well

Audiobook Review: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

At multiple points, while listening to Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, I keep asking myself if she’s a Star Trek fan. I ask this because allusions to Star Trek: Voyager were prominent in Staton Eleven and some of the themes and broad strokes of Sea of Tranquility echo the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “All Good Things.”

Or maybe it’s just that I’m such a Trek fan that I’m finding connections where none were necessarily intended.

Whatever it may be, those thoughts didn’t in any way diminish my enjoyment of Sea of Tranquility.. If anything, it enhanced it a bit.

Like Station Eleven, Tranquility is a literary science-fiction slow burn as Mandel introduces multiple characters across multiple time periods and slyly slips in details that will pay dividends as layers of this literary onion are slowly peeled away. Mandel gives us a time-travel story less interested in the mechanics of traveling through time but instead looking at the character impacts that time travel and paradoxes create upon various characters. A dense crowd of characters including the time traveler, a musician, and an author on a book tour inhabit these pages, each of them given a moment to shine. I won’t give away too many of the details here because that might ruin some of the well-earned surprises that Mandel sets up over the course of the story. Just know that if things start slow, there’s a reason and that your patience will be rewarded.

Mandel’s story of hope and optimism in the wake of dark days or overwhelming real-world circumstances is the kind of a breath of fresh air that I need literarily. The sense of human connection that develops over the course of this story was utterly compelling and delightful. I know that Station Eleven was adapted for the screen by HBO — and I couldn’t help but wonder if this one might also be developed for the screen as well. Given the nature of the story and its time-travel implications, I’m not sure it could or would work as effectively.

Give this one a chance and just let it wash over you. I found it compelling, entertaining, and enthralling.

Audiobook Review: Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen by Terrance Dicks

“Revenge of the Cybermen” was never intended to be the season finale for Doctor Who’s twelfth season. It became the “de facto” end to the season when the BBC decided to hold over the already produced “Terror of the Zygons” for the next season in the fall.

So, if you’re expecting an epic, spine-tingling end to Tom Baker’s first season as the Doctor, you may be a bit disappointed. I’ve detailed my disappointments with the serial itself elsewhere, so I won’t rehash those here. Instead, I will attempt to review the Target novel version of this one.

Early on in my Doctor Who watching days, I checked the adaptation of “Revenge of the Cybermen” out of the library a lot. It was one of a dozen Target books reprinted in the United States under the Pinnacle banner — and to my mind, that meant it had to be one of the best the series and range had to offer.

Alas, “Revenge of the Cybermen” isn’t one of the best, but I wouldn’t say this adaptation is one of the worst that Terrance Dicks ever gave us. It does its best to translate the televised story faithfully to the printed page, though at times you can feel Dicks’ frustration at trying to make the (supposedly) emotionless Cybermen interesting on the printed page. This comes across a good bit when various Cybermen speak or when Dicks is forced to try and explain away why they’re acting emotionally when (technically) they shouldn’t have any emotional reaction to things.

Dicks does a bit better in translating the epic Vogan conflict to the printed page –or at least he helped this fan identify who was who in the conflict a bit better than the televised version did. Dicks seems to understand when to minimize certain aspects of the story (the gaping loopholes in the Cybermen’s plan) and when and what to expand and play up. He even tries to find an explanation for why Voya is able to toodle about the galaxy, though there is little explanation of why it comes so close to the Nerva Beacon.

All in all, it’s a good job with a script that was full of gaping holes to begin with. There isn’t a lot of depth given to the supporting cast, but this is far from the later fourth Doctor adventures when it feels like Dicks is only being given enough time to translate a shooting script to the printed page.

As an audiobook, this one works fairly well, though the nitpicky fan in me found it hard to hear Cybermen speaking in mechanical voices as opposed to what we saw in the original version. It’s an interesting choice and one that creates a consistent feel to the Cybermen audiobooks, even if it doesn’t line up with the televised version. Nicholas Briggs does solid work, even trying to give us his own take on the fourth Doctor, which is good but he’s no Jon Culshaw.

Christmas Listening

This week, I passed 1400 miles running for 2021. That’s a lot of hours out pounding the pavement in every type of weather condition from the heat of summer to the cold of winter. I tend to draw the line at thunderstorms and heavy rains to prevent a running workout (I find drivers seem to have a hard enough time seeing/acknowledging me in good conditions.

My running time provides me with the opportunity to catch up on podcasts, create a rocking playlist, or listen to an audiobook.

During the Christmas season, I find that I like to listen to festive things — whether it’s a playlist of various Christmas favorites and covers — or a holiday-themed audiobook. This year, I threw in a couple of old favorites from old-time radio as well and I had some thoughts.

Burns and Allen: Christmas in Santa’s Workshop

I find my preference for OTR shows leans more toward comedy — and Burns and Allen is one of my favorite shows. I just can’t say this particular episode is a favorite or necessarily a great example of what makes me such a fan of the show.

It comes from a season with George Burns and Gracie Allen adopting a duck. The duck has a voice a bit like Donald and reacts pretty much like you’d expect. The episode takes place on Christmas Eve and finds the duck and Gracie falling asleep while waiting for Santa. In a dream, they’re whisked off to the North Pole to battle the evil witch who has stolen all of Santa’s toys. Various regulars appear in other roles during the journey, including George as a prince.

I’d heard this one years ago when I checked it out on cassette from my local library and didn’t enjoy it much then. Time hasn’t improved my opinion of it. Part of it is that it lacks the George/Gracie dynamic that generally makes the show work so well. And part of it is that it feels overly silly at times. Again, the whole partially talking duck thing probably took me out of it. But I link it above in case you feel like it’s something you might want to hear.

Jack Benny: Christmas 1938, Christmas Shopping 1943

On the other hand, these Jack Benny episodes were right up my alley. It’s easy to forget that in the days of OTR, there weren’t repeats, so the writers could use variations on the same routine each year. In this case, it’s the various adventures of Jack shopping and/or buying gifts for his fellow cast members. Neither of these necessarily dig too deeply into the “Jack is cheap” laughs, but instead give Jack and his cast new ways to shine. Benny is fascinating to me because he invented the situation comedy with the recurring characteristics being mined for laughs. These two are solid examples of why Jack Benny was so good.

The Great Gildersleeve: Christmas Program (1942)

The Great Gildersleeve may be my all-time favorite OTR show and it’s one that keeps surprising me. This Christmas episode from 1942 is chock full of what I love about the show. Gildy is behind on his Christmas shopping due to the annual water report and is trying to catch up. Meanwhile, his rival Judge Hooker has proposed to Leila Ransom and Gildy is trying to get her to turn down his proposal before she heads to Savannah for the holidays.

Gildersleeve feels like one of the first shows to have a continuity of sorts (that wasn’t a serial like Superman or the Lone Ranger, mind you) in the forms of Gildy’s various romances. At this point, Leila is clearly the romantic foil of choice, though this time around I was struck by how manipulative she is to Gildy and the Judge. She plays the two off each other to get a ride to the airport, then proceeds to flirt with the pilot while in front of a man who has proposed to her and another suitor.

That said, this one hits the right spirit for the season and may be the favorite of the OTR I sampled during Christmas. And it’s amusing to hear a show come from a war time and discuss how war bonds are a better gift than a model airplane.

There’s Something about Merry by Codi Hall

Since the birth of his son Jace, Clark Griffin has been the most devoted of single dads. Working hard to earn his degree, he’s been nose to the grindstone at work to provide the security and loving home that he and his brother, Sam, grew up without. So, when he sees an ad to be the foreman at the Winters’ Christmas tree farm, Clark is quick to apply and move back to his hometown.

Merry Winters returned to town a year ago, smarting from the latest in a string of failed romances. She’s slowly getting herself back on track, though she wants to take a greater part in running the family business. When she’s roped into overseeing the local holiday event, Merry finds demands on her time are increasing — she’s also a devoted knitter, making stuffed creatures that look like male genitalia as voodoo dolls for scorned friends.

While Merry and Clark had a moment when they could have connected romantically in high school, Clark sees her as off-limits because she’s the daughter of his bosses and Merry sees Clark as off-limits because she sees him as competition to run the family business someday. So, when the two download a dating app and find a connection in the small town, they have little to no idea that they could be kindling a new holiday romance.

I spent time in the appropriately named Mistletoe last year, so a return visit this year with Codi Hall’s There’s Something About Merry was a pleasant holiday treat. As she did with her previous couple of Nick and Noel, Hall creates reasonable, believable obstacles to the budding romance of Merry and Clark. Clark has issues with trust — from his parents to the mother of his child abandoning them hours after their son was born — while Merry is stubborn, independent, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

The romance has its steps forward and backward, finally culminating in the pair getting together in a sweet, steamy way. I will admit there was a point about a third of the way in that it felt like Clark had truly blown his shot, but it’s nice to see that he could recover a bit and find his footing. Hall also wisely brings in Clark’s status as a single dad and the connection he’s building with the Winters family as potential consideration to the relationship.

Even when I had guessed that a certain someone from the past would show up to throw a monkey wrench in things, Hall was able to surprise me a bit with how this particular plot thread was utilized.

I know I’m probably not the target audience for romance novels. But they make for a nice, fun distraction while pounding the pavement and I’ve got to admit that Hall has kind of got me hooked on spending a bit of my holiday season in Mistletoe each year. She’s found romance for two of the three Winter siblings, so I can only hope that the seeds she’s sewing for the other sister might pay off in her next book.

An entirely satisfying holiday romance that is the right balance of sweet, sassy, and steamy.

Audiobook Review: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ian Fleming

While reading On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, I found myself wondering if Ian Fleming had ever been married and what his relationship with his spouse was like.

The question arose early in the story when the father of Tracey (the supposed love of Bond’s life) is having a conversation with Bond about the pursuit of Tracey’s mother. When the comment that some women just want to be raped came up (not for the first time in the Bond series, mind you), I couldn’t help but wonder about Fleming and his wife. Living in the world of easy researching, I quickly found out that the romance and relationship of Fleming and his wife was a volatile as I expected based on some of the comments made by various male characters in his novels.

And yet, interestingly enough, it’s never Bond who makes such statements. If Bond is intended as some type of Mary Sue for Fleming, it’s interesting to note that while he enjoys the company of the ladies, he doesn’t necessarily support forcing his interest on them. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Bond is exactly a knight in shining armor — though Fleming would have you think he is. Bond is a man of opinions and principles. While he isn’t agreeing that some women just need to be sexually assaulted, he is quick to agree that what the depressed Tracey needs is some good loving — and he’s only too happy to provide that interest for her.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service feels like Fleming is trying to do some character building with Bond, though whether or not it’s a success depends on the reader. Some of the more recent Bond movies have suggested that Bond is a relic of different era and it feels like Fleming is saying that in this novel. Bond is dismissive of certain trends that younger men seem to be showing throughout the novel and clearly believes that his old-fashioned ways are the way to a woman’s heart –or at the very least her bedroom.