11 March 2015

Feathers From the Sky (Heartwarming - 2013 Advent Calendar) by Posy Roberts

 Cal Thompson is going a little mad over the Christmas holiday, stuck in a tiny house with fourteen members of his immediate family. There's no privacy and no boyfriend to help him cope—because Philip is still a secret, though not for long. Cal's family knows he's bisexual, but they've always assumed Cal would marry a woman and be fruitful and multiply. Just as he's ready to set the record straight, his parents tell the family they're selling the family house and tip this introvert's world on edge.

Philip Sherman arrives at Cal's family home to find his lover mourning the loss of his home, paralyzed by the abrupt and unexpected announcement that trumped his own. Though Philip takes the setback in stride, they won't be able to avoid the calling of their hearts for long: Cal needs to reveal the truth of his relationship with Philip to his family, and Philip has a question he's desperate to have answered.

A story from the Dreamspinner Press 2013 Advent Calendar package "Heartwarming".
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19087943-feathers-from-the-sky
I have heard other books narrated by Paul Morey so when I read the premise of this one, I instantly was thrilled to be able to listen to it for review.

I loved this story. How much? Now that I’ve heard the audiobook, I’ve purchased the ebook. If there had been a paperback, I would have purchased it as well. Yes, I loved the story that much.

Cal is home to visit family over Christmas. It’s a yearly get-together with his parents, 6 siblings, and the growing list of nieces and nephews. He has a slightly hard time enjoying it as an introverted person; the loud togetherness gets to him at times. Plus, he has a secret he plans to reveal and it scares him. While his family knows he’s bisexual, they still assume he’ll date, fall in love with, and marry a woman. What he has to tell them is that he hasn’t dated a woman for years and that he is in love with Phillip, a man they all think is his roommate.

I loved his family. Loud, teasing, raucous; to me they felt like a family would act. And when his parents announce they’re selling the family home right after Cal’s youngest brother graduates high school, he’s thrown. I think we can all understand, at least to some degree, how his emotions are thrown topsy-turvy as he tries to imagine never coming back home again. Of course, at that moment, his boyfriend arrives and he has to act like Phillip’s just his roommate.

One-by-one, Cal’s siblings and parents learn of how he truly feels about Phillip and I adored their reactions. Especially Corey’s – and no, I won’t tell you about it as it made me laugh out loud and you, truly, should be allowed to have the same reaction. The scene where Phillip let’s Cal truly know how he feels is so romantic and sweet, but the ending where they drive back to their home in Minneapolis topped it all.

The story had everything I enjoy: laughter, romance, and eroticism. What more could someone need?

The narration: I like Paul Morey’s voice, it’s one of the reasons I jumped at this book – besides the great description – but as much as I love his voice and how he is able to give characters their own voice, he messed up in two areas here. First, a few times it sounded like he stopped speaking into the microphone. His voice would dip down to where I had to strain to hear it and then suddenly be back. The main thing is: I don’t think he should try any accents other than American. I had a hard time figuring out where Phillip was supposed to be from. One moment, his accent sounded pseudo-Scottish, the next pseudo-Irish, and half the time he sounded like, well… Have you ever seen the movie musical 1776? The accent affected by John Collum who played Edward Rutledge from South Carolina is who Phillip sounded like quite often. It was hard to not wince sometimes because, as I said, Phillip’s voice kept changing. He was, I found out part way into the story, supposed to have a soft English accent due to his nannies as a child. But not once did an English accent come out. Other than that, though, he did an amazing job of narrating the story. However, that issue did drop my review from 5 stars to 4 stars.

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