Audiobook Review: Add Love and Mix by Sean Michael

Firefighter Jason "Jase" Weller and EMT Scott Bronson are living the perfect life. They work together in jobs they love, they live together, and in their downtime, they still can’t get enough of each other. It’s been six amazing years. Then on Christmas Eve, Jase’s former lover Elsa shows up with a six-year-old girl in tow. The strung-out junkie claims Kerry is Jase’s daughter and it’s his turn to care for her, and then she walks out.

Shocked at both the fact that Elsa is now a junkie and that he has a daughter he never knew about, Jase nonetheless steps up to the plate as her father and Scott offers his full support. Having an instant family comes with plenty of challenges, and the two men work to deal with sweeping changes in their lives and to make things right for Kerry.

It’s not going to be easy, and their new circumstances test them and their relationship like nothing ever has. They’ll need all the love they have for each other, and the love they discover for their daughter, to keep from breaking apart.

Listening Length: 6 hrs 18 min
Narrator: Steve Balderson

This was a super sweet, uplifting story about a little girl who has been neglected by her drug addicted mother and then gets united with her father and his long-term partner. There is hope, love and quite a bit of fear as these two men become instant dads to this six year old girl, so why didn’t I even finish it? I got sooooo bored!

I don’t really know what I was expecting, if I was expecting anything in particular at all, but it most definitely was not a ‘preparing for parenting 101’ book. I got to about 50% through and within the story two weeks had passed since Jason discovered he had a daughter and starting caring for her. All we had seen was their mundane aspects of life and in waaaay to much detail. Details about the lists these men had to make to prepare for their daughter. Details about what breakfast was like, almost every morning! Details about what furniture they’d need for her room and then seeing that shopping trip. I understand the need for all that stuff in a story when the plot is essentially about becoming a parent, but I really thought it would be the first 30% at most and then we’d get to a story line. It would’ve been nice to see something happen other than shopping, preparing and the boys going to work.

I probably could have persevered and enjoyed the story at a slow pace if reading this, but unfortunately the narration was starting to grate on me.

The dialogue was extremely rushed, extremely! It was super difficult at times to figure out who was speaking and that wasn’t helped by very very subtle differences in the two main characters voices. Due to the rushed dialogue it was also hard to differentiate between what was being said and what was being thought by the characters. I hate that, it just leaves me confused and I don’t like being confused when listening to a book. On top of that there were these weird periodic pauses in the narration that make the voice sound quite robotic… It was very off putting!

Obviously the story will work for some people who like a nice slow-paced family- building/healing story, it was much too slow for me though. I wouldn't recommend this audiobook though, just read the book. However, I would listen to something else by this narrator as I haven’t heard anything else by him and I could see the potential for him to be an enjoyable narrator.