Love Match (2010-2012)

Love Match, Volume 2

De: Kyell Gold

Narrado por: Jeremy Sewell

Having left his tennis school, young jackal Rocky N'Guwe has to adjust to life on the professional tour, starting at the bottom. At least he's got the company of his mother and his boyfriend Marquize, and he can start earning enough money to bring his sister home from Africa. But between his mother insisting on coaching him and his boyfriend pulling him away from practice, Rocky's going to have to decide whether family and relationships are more important than the game he's given his life to--especially when he turns eighteen and adult problems pile onto that already-complicated life.

©2018 Kyell Gold (P)2025 Jeremy Sewell

Great next chapter, can't wait for the next

I was so happy when the next chapter of Love March was released that I had to get it that same day. After reading the book myself some time ago, it was a great refresher continuing Rocky's story and one of my few complaints, though not really a complaint, is that it ended too quickly! I really have to stop listening to series that have not completely released yet, because it just leaves me waiting for more. The main characters are great as usual, the character development another Kyell staple here. my only very minor issue I had was I would have liked to have seen the secondary characters flushed out a little more, but because this is exclusively from Rocky's point of view, it's much more forgiving than a general narrative story might be.

Jeremy's performance was great, it's nice seeing him back again from the first book of the series and a slew of Kyell books, including those from the Dev and Lee series. My only two issues with his performance were that there were some parts where either he was too quiet for some of the material to be heard clearly or the noise gate was a little too overzealous, because some of the words were jumbled. Most of this was in the first few chapters and either I became used to it or the issue resolved itself I think after the first two chapters or so. Jeremy also has the slightest tendency to read a little faster than I would normally like to see in an audio book, but I think he's become better since the early Dev and Lee days. These issues are quite minor to me, so I don't feel like it's worth docking a star for performance.

I can't wait for the conclusion of Love March and for Jeremy's return, I just hope it's not too long of a wait.

Good character dialog

Kyell Gold has always been good at making relatable characters with fairly real dialog. His books are almost always dialog rich, but this leaves descriptions of the world and character surroundings lacking. The reader or listener is expected to fill in the gaps and build the world on their own, luckily this works for a world that is just the USA with different names. And when you add in the years it's easy to picture what the tech, style and surrounds look like. Rocky the main character is both likable and flawed he behaves very much like a teenage boy and due to the dialog it's easy to see yourself making quick decisions and being emotional like you are or were. The tennis while the main focus is not nearly as boring as you would expect feels like your in the head of an athlete explaining why and how they do what they do.
The biggest negative to this audio book is the narrator. Jeremy Swell is not a strong narrator because of his lack of range. Every character sounds the same, it works for this book because it is written as a reflection on the life of the main character, but would still be better if there was any distinction between characters outside of the dialog being written well. The recording quality is also poor many times throughout the book the quality gets bad and whatever is happening in the background of the narrator bleeds in or a high pitch ring plays to make me think there is something wrong with my car pausing to listen for it only to realize it's the book. Then the bad editing with multiple times the narrator repeating the line and leaving both takes in.

TLDR: Good book that would a good stage play or maybe a comic, poor narration.