The Favor

By: Megan Hart

Narrated by: Suzy Lexington

Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

With characteristic compassion and searing honesty, Megan Hart weaves a shattering small-town story about what can turn brother against brother, and the kinds of secrets that cannot remain untold.

Janelle Decker has happy childhood memories of her grandma's house, and even lived there through high school. Now she's back with her 12-year-old son to look after her ailing Nan, and hardly anything seems to have changed, not even the Tierney boys next door.

Gabriel Tierney, local bad boy. The twins, Michael and Andrew. After everything that happened between the four of them, Janelle is shocked that Gabe still lives in St. Mary's. And he isn't trying very hard to convince Janelle he's changed from the moody teenage boy she once knew. If anything, he seems bent on making sure she has no intentions of rekindling their past. To this day, though there might've been a lot of speculation about her relationship with Gabe, nobody else knows she was there in the woods "that" day...the day a devastating accident tore the Tierney brothers apart and drove Janelle away. But there are things that even Janelle doesn't know, and as she and Gabe revisit their interrupted romance, she begins to uncover the truth denied to her when she ran away all those years ago.

©2013 Megan Hart (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Not your typical Megan Hart...

Ever since my first Megan Hart book (Broken), I have become obsessed with her heartbreaking love stories. I have been debating this book since before it came out, but once it did, there was no question about if I would or would not purchase it.

I do not "regret" the purchase, but this story just felt so.....tame. When comparing to the rest of Megan's books, this one is minimally sexual. It's not steamy in the least, and the sexual encounters are barely there, and not erotic at all. I do love the story line, and the history between the two main characters, but it never made me shed a tear, like I usually do with Megan's books when she gives you something good, breaks it, then gives it back. I do love the fact that these aren't some young 20 somethings that fall in love with each other a week after meeting.

The flashbacks and flashforwards are kind of confusing, and you really have to be paying attention when they come. She says "then" when there is about to be a flashback, but there is no warning when coming back to current time. I had to rewind a few times to understand what happened when.

The relationship with the twins was confusing at times, and I was disappointed that one of them only appeared in the story, in the flashbacks. It would have been interesting to see him interact with his family in current times.

Lastly, the narrator was not horrible, but she does not do a male voice very well. When you have to range between a 12yo boy up to an 80+yo woman, you should have a bit of a better range. It almost always sounded like a whiny girl making voices. Not to say I would never listen to another book narrated by Suzy Lexington again, but I just don't think that she did as well with this one, as she could have.