Simple Men

By: Eric Arvin

Narrated by: Charlie David

Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

Chip Arnold is a well-liked football coach at a small liberal arts college, but his personal life is in a bit of a rut. He goes out drinking with his colleagues, gets along well with his players, and dates all the prettiest women in town - he has the life most straight men dream of. But lately none of the women he dates seem to be igniting any passion in him. Then he meets the new school chaplain, Foster Lewis.

Romantic attraction to another man is new and terrifying, and Chip just can't put his finger on why he's drawn to Foster, but it's stronger than anything he's felt for anyone in his life. Never one to back down from a challenge, Chip decides to go for it. But love is never simple, and sometimes it's a downright mess!

©2010 Eric Arvin (P)2011 Eric Arvin

Good story

What did you love best about Simple Men?

Charlie David

What did you like best about this story?

It was sweet, funny sometimes and full of love

Have you listened to any of Charlie David’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

His voice is sexy hot!

If you could take any character from Simple Men out to dinner, who would it be and why?

the lady with the golf cart, she was funny

Any additional comments?

I'm glad I got this book, I will definitely listen to it again. It's a feel good book

A swing and a miss

I’ll start out by saying the narrator, Charlie David, is great. He put lots of emotion into the character, but he couldn’t really “save” this book. This is a very weird and confusing story. Eric Arvin is a very good writer, but the story doesn’t “flow” very well. It is really two mm romance stories that occur at the same time; Chip & Foster and Brad & Jason. Chip is a straight football coach that has “insta love” for the new chaplain, Foster. OK I can go with that. But then the relationship takes these huge leaps that even I, who am pretty laid back about unrealistic events happening in a fictional story, couldn’t buy. First, Chip has very little angst about falling in love with a guy for the first time in his life. Then Foster “outs” Chip to his boss and no one, including Chip bats and eye. The other couple, Brad and Jason, are just annoying to me and I really don’t get why they are even there. That said, there are also really fun moments like when a killer squirrel (in Chips estimation) invades Foster's chapel and Chip comes to the rescue. When Chip tried and fails to subdue the squirrel he says "Oh it's going to remember that." and Foster replies "It's a squirrel, not the mafia." Lines like that make me want to overlook the other stuff, because that is just funny. Alas, I couldn’t because after holding out hope, the ending was bad too.

Yes! All of the yes!

This story was super cute! Sure it was a little predictable, but you fell for all the characters so hard it didn't matter. I love TJ Klune and I had to show some support it his husband. So glad I did!! Definitely worth the money

Story had great potential

This story could have been awesome with a great narrator but it bombed big time.

Didn't work for me

*1.5 stars*

This review is killing me to write because I love when Eric Arvin writes fantasy. He is just such a unique thinker, such an interesting guy, that I was sure that I would love his contemporary stuff too. And when I saw that this was a GFY? No brainer! However, this was very hard for me to get through and I ended up DNFing at 75%.

Now, when I DNF an audiobook it is not done lightly. Audiobooks are NOT cheap and I am very choosy when it comes to my Audible listens. However, after over 4 hours of not liking what I was hearing I decided to call it quits.

My main problem with this book has to do both with the narrator and the writing style. The book had one of my GREATEST pet peeves: Constant head hopping. I'm talking POV changes sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph. There is no sense of who is talking because the POV is continuously shifting. To make matters worse, there are four MCs, so I was honestly confused a lot of the time.

In addition, the narrator, Charlie David, had absolutely no change in tone or intonation from person to person. He read each character and part exactly the same (perhaps because there was too much head hopping for him to keep track??) and that just added to the muddled listening experience. I have a STRONG preference for narrators that change their voice for each character. If I wanted to hear a book read entirely in one voice, I would just read it out loud to myself. I want a narrator that makes me feel the story, and a lot of that has to do with vocal differentiation for me. After listening to Chase in Shadow, where Sean Crisden manages at least 7 different voices, this just felt flat to me. It isn't that Charlie David doesn't have an expressive and pleasant voice, it just isn't what I'm looking for in a narrator.

In terms of the GFY, which I usually love, it didn't work for me. I found Chip's sudden sexuality change to be unrealistic. He seemed almost grossed out by other men and it made the GFY seem totally out of the blue. To top it off, it was strongly insta-lovely (I remember they were talking like their second or third time meeting and Chip said he realized that he loved Foster?? WTF?), which I despise.

I also didn't like having two couples in the story. It took away the focus from Chip and Foster and it felt awkward for me.

All in all, I didn't like this story. While I would buy another of Eric Arvin's paranormal or fantasy books in a heartbeat, I'll pass on his contemporaries.