Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Forget Me Not
AUTHOR: Felice Stevens
NARRATOR: Tristan James
PUBLISHER: Self published
LENGTH: 9 hrs and 35 mins
RELEASE DATE: January 12, 2021
BLURB:
Texas cowboy Shea Montgomery has plans. Big plans. Still mourning the loss of his beloved father, he’s finally ready to sell the Forget Me Not ranch. He’s dusting off his boots, packing up his cowboy hat, and moving to New York City to make his dreams come true. So what if he won’t have his horse to ride or a place to call home? He’ll make it work. Somehow. First, he has to deal with a bunch of corporate types who don’t know the front end of a horse from the back. Especially this one guy who can’t seem to stay out of trouble. Or out of Shea’s mind.
Jake Axelrod’s perfect family is shattered when his daughter stops speaking and his husband ends their marriage. Two years later, she remains locked in silence, and Jake has closed himself off. His life is structured to the minute, and Jake is convinced he’ll be alone forever, until he’s forced to attend a company retreat at a dude ranch in Texas, where he meets a cowboy who sends him spinning out of control.
Jake can’t help falling…off his horse, out of a rowboat, and into Shea’s arms.
And Shea is more than willing to catch him.
Neither man wants to let go, and the time they spend together only makes it harder to be apart. A decision needs to be made: work it out or say good-bye. Jake’s life is in New York, but he can’t walk away from Shea or the ranch, and Shea must decide if the dream of a lifetime will lead him right back to the place where he started – where his heart belongs.
REVIEW:
I can sum up my review of the audiobook of Felice Stevens’ Forget Me Not in six words: Read the book. Skip the audio.
It pains me to say that because I am a huge audiobook lover. But something about the narration of this book was off and it detracted from my enjoyment of what is otherwise a terrific, lovely romance.
Felice Stevens created an endearing couple in uptight NYC corporate professional Jake Axelrod and Texas cowboy/underwear model/ranch owner Shea Montgomery. Jake is a single dad to an adorable golden-haired little girl who’s afflicted with traumatic mutism, cause unknown (at least until later on in the book). Jake’s despicable husband left him two years prior and severed all ties to him as well as their daughter. Sad and suffering, Jake meets the gorgeous sweet-talker Shea on a business retreat to Shea’s Forget Me Not Ranch in Remembrance, Texas.
An opposites attract, city boy/country boy romance unfolds between Jake and Shea, and I loved everything about it. The couple faces many complications and challenges. The cumulative stress on Jake from his unrewarding job and single-parenting a child with special needs takes its toll on him. The devastation from his ex-husband’s betrayal continues to dampen his personality and outlook, leaving him sad and very lonely. Shea, for his part, still feels grief from his beloved father’s death and confusion about his path forward. He thinks something better is out there for him, maybe in the siren’s call of the bright lights and big city of New York.
While Shea is absolutely delectable with his syrupy southern drawl and endless charm, Jake is more reserved and conflicted. These two have serious chemistry, though, and a strong love and desire to be together. There’s no easy answer, though, for a city professional who needs his corporate job for health insurance and a country boy whose Texas roots run deep. I appreciated that Ms. Stevens didn’t gloss over the difficulty in finding compromise, nor did she seek to unrealistically tie everything up in a neat tidy bow.
Overall, Forget Me Not is a book that I recommend highly and, as predicted, or maybe promised, by the title, it’s not a story you’ll soon forget.
Usually, an audio version of a book adds something to the mix. Generally, audio allows me to connect better with the characters because the narrator gives the words on the page life and the story spatial dimension. Sadly, that did not happen here.
Honestly, I’m a bit puzzled by it. Forget Me Not presented my first opportunity to listen to the narrator, Tristan James, and I expected a vocal performance. That is not what he delivered. What I heard was competent, but more like a recitation of lines. The delivery is smooth and even, but overall mild and lacking investment. It’s a singular voice telling the story from every vantage point, man or woman, main or ancillary character. Virtually the same tone across broad swaths of the narrative, with minimal differentiation between character voices.
Mr. James presented the greatest difficulty for me due to his lack of emotional “punch”. One of two things happened throughout the majority of the book: Either emotion was absent, or the wrong inflection and delivery was attached to the emotion described. If Shea is described as despondent, the words sound just like when Shea is excited, or nervous, or sad. Things like pacing, pitch, tone, inflections, emphasis … all of these variations create a texture of a person’s voice. They enable the listener to hear and feel vulnerability and the subtleties of the character’s emotions.
The mainly invariable, unchanging delivery of everything from ordinary conversation and inner monologuing to arguments and sex scenes made it difficult for me to engage with the characters or the story. Worse, it distracted me from the lovely romance unfolding on the pages. My ears would hear a mismatch between what the character should have sounded like given the emotion described, and what they did sound like in Mr. James’ translation and I couldn’t focus on anything else.
Maybe this is just a poor showing for him? I’ve seen other positive reviews of his work and I’d like to believe all those people can’t be wrong. However, it could also just be a matter of personal preference and his style doesn’t work for me. I’m willing to give his narration another try, though, albeit on another story.
Ultimately, my rating reflects my view of the audiobook because, as stated before, the book itself is well worth the read. While I don’t recommend the audiobook of Forget Me Not, I’d still suggest you check out the offered audio sample of it to see what you think. Mr. James’ style in this book may work well for you even though it didn’t for me. To each their own. Just know that Mr. James’ pacing is consistently slooooow which creates a lengthy audio experience. The book is over 9 and a half hours long, so you’ll need patience and perhaps even tolerance because what may be palatable or even easy listening for an hour or so, may become monotonous over the long haul.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS: