Reviewed by Annika

TITLE: Play it by Ear

SERIES: Replay #2

AUTHOR: K.M. Neuhold

NARRATOR: Kenneth Obi

PUBLISHER: Self Published

RELEASE DATE: January 24, 2019

LENGTH: 5 hours, 46 minutes

BLURB:

Lando
My muse is gone and I haven’t written a word of music in over a year. Every time I close my eyes, all I can see is Dawson. Nine years ago, just before Downward Spiral’s first major tour, I met my soulmate and then I walked away. Now that I’ve finally tracked him down again, things have changed. I’ll have to make him fall for me all over again. But is it possible I put our single weekend together on a pedestal or could Dawson really be The One?

Dawson
A traumatic brain injury nine years ago left me deaf and with spotty memory of the first twenty years of my life. When one of the biggest rock stars in the world shows up and seems to know me, I’m not sure what to believe. Is it possible he’s telling the truth when he says he’s been in love with me for nine years, even if I can’t remember ever meeting him?

REVIEW:

Nine years ago Lando and Dawson met on a plane, they connected and then spent an unforgettable weekend together. Well, unforgettable for Lando, he’s spent the coming nine years writing about that weekend, longing for the man he fell for so long ago. The man who vanished without a word. For Dawson, the last nine years has been anything but easy. A car accident erased some of his memories and took his hearing. It made him afraid of losing what he had left and he now lives his life in details; writing everything down and never taking any risks. Many memories has been pieced together by family and friends, except that last weekend right before the accident. No one knows where he was or with who, and there is a part of Dawson that just know that something important happened over that weekend.

Play it By Ear is the second book in the Replay series and while it could probably be read as a standalone without any issues, I still recommend starting from the beginning. Each book is set during the same frame of time. The band, aptly named Downward Spiral, or rather it’s members are spiralling out of control, so in an effort to get back on track they each go their separate ways, to regroup, to think. Lando decides to head back to the last place he was truly happy, and just maybe finding the man he’s been dreaming of for so long. However, when he does find him, sans memories of their weekend together he realises he has a challenge on his hand – to make Dawson fall for him all over again.

This is mostly a sweet and sugary romance, there’s not a lot of angst or heaviness. Nor is it very credible, at least not the actions of our two main guys, well Lando mostly. I mean take his nine year obsession with Dawson, it would stand to reason that he’d at least try to find him again, social media stalking at the very least – but nothing. Then we have the timeline; that weekend changed them both, and that weekend had them ready to fully commit to each other, can you say insta-love? I’m not a huge fan of this. Finally there is the whole security issue – I mean you lose a phone and you are going to freak out just a tiny bit, the information that’s on it and so on. I mean I would freak out – and I don’t have much interesting stuff on there. So how Lando (and his manager) could just shrug their shoulders, buy a new phone and just forget about the first one is beyond me… But you know what? I was in the mood for this story. I didn’t need to believe in it all 100%, I just needed to enjoy the love story for what it was. And I did, and sugar fix gotten I am now a very happy girl.

Kenneth Obi is not one of my favourite narrator, and not that long ago I think I might have said I would stay away from his narrations from now on…. But then this book showed up on my radar and I just had to listen to it. I don’t regret a thing. I can’t explain it but this time I was engaged, I enjoyed the narration and generally had a great time listening to Dawson and Lando’s story. I did have one problem though, and that was the (few) times Dawson was actually speaking rather than signing or writing Obi made his speech sound off, mispronouncing words and wrong intonations and so on. I would have bought that if Dawson was born deaf and then learnt to speak, but he was hearing, and speaking, for the first twenty years of his life so it just didn’t work for me.

That being said I am looking forward to the next audiobook in this series, I need to know how it all will play out in the end.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Audible

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