It Had to Be You

By: Jill Shalvis

Narrated by: Annie Greene

Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Ali Winters is not having a good day. Her boyfriend left her, everyone in town thinks she's a thief, and now she's about to be kicked out of her home. Her only shot at keeping a roof over her head and clearing her name is to beg for help from a police detective who's as sexy as he is stern....

After a high-profile case goes wrong, Luke Hanover returns to his hometown for some peace and quiet. Instead he finds a bombshell brunette in a heap of trouble. As he helps Ali put her world back together, the pieces of Luke's own life finally seem to fall into place. Is this the start of a sizzling fling? Or are Luke and Ali on the brink of something big in a little town called Lucky Harbor?

©2013 Jill Shalvis (P)2013 Hachette Audio

Narration

Jill’s books are good and I always listen to the whole series but she has bad narrators.

Mystery and romance in Lucky Harbor...

I really enjoy the Lucky Harbor series. All the books are fun sweet feel good listens. This one has the added bonus of a mystery. The narrator did a pretty good job but I must admit I would prefer to have the same narrator continue with all the series instead of a different one for each book. This is a great book to listen to during the summer.

I love this series.

the entire series is wonderful! Ali, the florist, is a great character, well written, well developed. the narrator Annie Greene, is not as good as some of the others who narrate the series and is not able to do a man's voice at all. however, having listened to all of the previous books, the story comes through even with a mediocre performance by the narrator.

this is probably better as a book than an audiobook because of that but it's such a great story that I was able to get through it.

Good story, good narration

What did you love best about It Had to Be You?

This story has lots of humor and many sweet moments. I enjoy this series and this is a solid addition to it.

Any additional comments?

I wish we had seen a little more interaction with the senior crowd (I love the senior crowd at Lucky Harbor!), and would love to know how the gallery showing went for Ali's ceramics. The narration was good, though the audio seemed to vary here and there, with a semi-echo quality occasionally - a distraction but not a problem. The narrator did distinguish all the different voices pretty well.

She reads like a First grader!

I almost couldn’t stand to finish the book because of the narration. Story was predictable.

2 ½ stars. It was ok, but I wanted it to be over.

That’s not a good sign.

The author had some good ideas and interesting characters. But when it came to filling in 300 pages, it just wasn’t special enough. At the end a small thing bothered me because it was predictable.

CAUTION SPOILER:
Someone calls the police saying a bad guy has a gun. By the time the police arrive the good guy managed to get the gun away from the bad guy, so the police arrest the good guy. I shouldn’t be bothered, but I was, but it was brief. Anyway the police suspected the bad guy and were supposed to be doing surveillance on the bad guy. So why were no police following the bad guy?
END SPOILER.

Ali was searching for the stolen money. If she was successful in finding it, the police might think she knew where it was all along and think she was guilty - again. She was kind of stupid in the things she was doing. Sometimes light stupidity is funny, but it wasn’t working for me.

I wish the author went into more plot development. Some good ideas were started but not continued. Why did the senator kill himself if he was getting away with other murders? Somehow this was Luke’s big guilt problem and I didn’t understand. I also wanted more about the reporters and his commander.

The relationship between Luke and Ali was kind of blah. It’s mostly doing good things to help each other out with their problems.

There are many books in the series. This is book 7. And even though I did not give this a high rating, I liked reading about this community. It was enjoyable. I felt like I’m living in a small town on the ocean.

One cute event made me chuckle. Luke and Ali were driving to a bar to talk to someone. Luke said “When we get there, let me lead.” He parked in the parking lot, catching her before she could jump out of the truck. “Wait.” He said. His phone was ringing. Holding onto her purse, clearly a man who knew how to slow down a woman, he punched speaker on his phone.

AUDIOBOOK NARRATOR:
The narrator Annie Greene was very good as a performer/narrator, but she says contractions in a way that jars me. Instead of couldn’t, hadn’t, etc., she says couldet and hadet. If speaking slowly she says couldunt, hadant, woulden. Every time she did this my mind went “what’s she doing?” I’m sorry for complaining, but I really prefer generic TV anchor speak.

Genre: contemporary romantic mystery