Nadz@Totally Addicted to Reading
Written on Nov 8, 2018
Sophie and Travis dated in college and everything was going well until the moment Travis decided he wanted to quit school and pursue his dreams of becoming a firefighter. Unfortunately, his plans differed from the one Sophie’s mom had for. her, which led to their separation. Fourteen years later Sophie is 8th grade teacher at Cannon middle school living a life void of dating and steeped in memories of the man she allowed to get away. Meanwhile, Travis is in the big city and raising his twelve-year-old daughter living his dream until an accident forced him into early retirement. He had no idea what his next move would be, but an unexpected phone call will lead to him returning to his home in Cannon where he reconnects with his past and reunite with the woman he left behind fourteen years ago.
Narrated from alternate POVs the story gave me a bird's-eye view into the minds of the character. I am not too sure what to make of Sophie. First, she chooses her career over love, and then spent the next fourteen years single and lonely. Then when the opportunity came for her to reclaim what she gave up, she was willing to leave it to chance. I would have expected her to be quick to cease this moment.
I admired Travis’s dedication to raising his daughter. The authenticity of his struggles made it easy to connect with him. Faced with the prospect of changing careers, dealing with work-related injury and single handily raising his daughter could not have been easy but he did so, anyway.
The story took a while for me to get into because of its slow pacing. It was not until around the 65% mark I saw Travis and Sophie rekindle their romance. Regrettably, I did not buy into the romance. Separated for fourteen years with no contact, yet within days after reconnecting they were all over each other. It was as if they were separated for months instead of years.
Narration
I have mixed feelings regarding the narration. Juliana Solo and Daniel James Lewis narrated Burnt. As I am new to the audiobook world, I am not familiar with their work. I had expected Juliana to perform each of the female parts and Daniel the male voices. However, that was not the case. As the story was narrated from both characters POV depending on, which character is, speaking at the time the narrator representing that person will perform all the voices in that scenario be it male or female.
I enjoyed listening to the female character. I thought she did a good job, capturing the voices. She made it easy to distinguish between the voices and she captured their expressions and emotions perfectly. The male narrator did nothing for me. His narration sounded flat and had some difficulty separating his male and female voices. Unlike his female counterpart, he failed to capture the expressions and emotions of the characters.
Conclusion/Recommendation
I was expecting drama angst due to their history, but the story did not deliver on this front. It would have been great if the author had included an epilogue providing details of the main characters' lives after their reunion. Despite this I found the story to be okay and I would read more from this author.