Reviewed by Stephen K.
TITLE: The Perfect Match
AUTHOR: Matt Burlingame
NARRATOR: John Steinkamp
PUBLISHER: Matt Burlingame
LENGTH: 3 hours
RELEASE DATE: October 23, 2018
BLURB:
Leaving his life in New York City behind, 33-year-old Ira Hughes has moved back into his childhood home to help care for his ailing father. His overbearing mother quickly guilts him into looking after her interests in the family curio shop. That means dealing with her business partner, Colton McCabe, the bully who made Ira’s teen years a living hell.
Ira is now forced to confront painful memories from his past. As he watches his father fight for his life, and his relationship with his mother becomes even more strained, he begins to find unexpected comfort in his time with Colton. Could it be that Colton is not the high school horror he used to be? Is the bane of his youth now becoming the love of his life?
REVIEW:
Ira Hughes, our main character here, is a 30 something man who grew up in rural upstate New York before leaving for college and the big city. Now his father is ill, and Ira returns, ostensibly to spend time with his father and his cold, undemonstrative mother. Ira’s parents have pretty much let Ira be his own man while away in the city, and apart from periodic visits, they’ve not kept him posted on what’s going on in their lives.
Other than his dad’s kidney disease problems, the main detail that they’ve omitted is that they sort of “adopted” Colton McCabe, the orphaned son of their best friends/next door neighbors, when the couple were killed while touring Europe.
Unknown to Ira’s parents, Colton was the bully that made Ira’s teen years miserable. Adding insult to injury, Colton came out to them as gay shortly after he lost his parents,. and Ira’s parents were supportive in a way that they never really got a chance to be for Ira.
I’m a sucker for coming home tales and for Christmas tales, and this is both. While this has a “Hallmark Movie” quality to it, it’s also bit more. The book focuses as much on Ira’s relationship with his undemonstrative mother, as on Ira’s relationship with his old nemesis.
His antipathy for her new “business partner” is explored and it’s the evolution of Ira’s viewpoint that makes this one as enjoyable as it is. Though told strictly from Ira’s POV, we can quickly see that, in many ways, Ira is stuck in his old mind set, while Colton has grown up quite bit. That evolution in viewpoint, his relationship with his mother, and his growing realization that, in many ways, he’s a lot like her, made this more than just another traditional Christmas tale.
Rather than reading this one I listened to the audio-book version of this as narrated by John Steinkamp.
Steinkamp is more of a traditional narrator than many of the guys who are more “voice actors” than narrators these days, but once one grows accustomed to his style, he’s perfectly fine. He did sound a bit older than the Ira I envisioned in my head, but that dissonance was pretty minor overall.
Ira’s and Colton’s voices were distinctive enough to easily tell apart. (though Colton got precious little time to speak in this one) The voices of Ira’s mom and dad, and those of the shop clerks were all done well enough so as to fit in. There was none of the “man trying to do a woman’s voice” issues that so many voice actors fall into.
Given it’s theme and the general feel, I can see this one easily falling into my seasonal playlist of holiday tales to listen to whilst “doing Christmas things.”
RATING: 
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