Your Perfect Year

A Novel

By: Charlotte Lucas, Alison Layland - translator

Narrated by: Carly Robins, P. J. Ochlan

Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

A man consumed by a meaningless life is going to do something he’s never considered doing before. He’s going to enjoy the day...

For hyper-particular publishing heir Jonathan Grief, the day starts like any other - with a strict morning fitness regimen that’ll keep his divorced, easily irritated, cynical, forty-two-year-old self in absolutely flawless physical condition. But all it takes to put a crimp in his routine is one small annoyance. Someone has left a leather-bound day planner with the handwritten title Your Perfect Year in his spot on his mountain bike at his fitness course! 

Determined to discover its owner, Jonathan opens the calendar to find that someone known only as “H.” has filled it in with suggestions, tasks, and affirmative actions for each day. The more he devotes himself to locating the elusive H., the deeper Jonathan is drawn into someone else’s rich and generous narrative - and into an attitude adjustment he desperately needs. 

He may have ended up with a perfect year by accident, but it seems fate has set Jonathan on a path toward healing, feeling, and maybe even loving again...if only he can meet the stranger who’s changing his life one day at a time.

©2019 by Charlotte Lucas. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Narration is horrible

The narrator reminds me of an old news reporter. Every word is spoken in the same sing song voice. Pauses are. In all. The wrong. Places. It is indescribably horrible.

Cute story

However, I highly recommend listening at 1.5 to 2 times the playback speed to limit the awkward pauses and to smooth out the deliberate manner of speaking by the male narrator. I assure you that the pauses and deliberate manner of speaking are completely how that type of stuffy male character would speak but I am not that tolerant so when I sped up the playback the book was much more enjoyable.

That being said, I really did like the story. The characters were, in their own way, interesting and friendly, and the narration (once sped up) was pleasant. The story doesn't require a lot of attention so listening while making dinner or doing housework was easy. I will say the ending lacked a good, well, happily ever after ending. it ended well enough but not how it should have.

Narrator was a bit annoying

The story was ok, although I found the female protagonist's relationship annoying and I didn't buy it. That said, I might have liked it better had I read it instead of listening.

I felt the narrator was a little shrill. Several times I cringed when her voice went up along with the volume. Maybe better editing could've helped that.

Likely most people won't care, but I was very annoyed by the female narrator's pronunciation of words ending in "ing," of which there were many. Words ending in a gerund should not sound like "toureen." That g on the end is subtle but important.

This could have been so much better.

I couldn’t get past my frustration with Hannah, who was absurdly self-centered and just not believable. Anyone with the wisdom to write the diary would have reacted with more compassion and maturity to Simon’s decision. The narrator of the two female voices was beyond annoying- she was fine during regular reading, but when voicing dialogue was so grating I had to turn down the volume. I found the male narrator unpleasant to listen to as well, but warmed up to Jonathan’s character eventually.

Comments from a reader

This is a wonderful novel about learning to relax, love, and be happy. I highly recommend it to people that know that their lives are full of too much work and not enough love and happiness.

An airport read

The author's pen name of Charlotte Lucas definitely caught me as I am quite the Jane Austen fan but I'm not really into popular romantic fiction that is generally well represented at airport bookstores. This one was a freebie from Amazon on world book day and I picked up the audiobook on the cheap. It's a translation from the original German and perhaps the European flavor is a little darker than what one would expect from an American light romantic comedy. But it was still pretty light.

It wasn't terrible but it's really just not my genre. The narrators got a little grating, especially the woman and especially when there was excitement/strong emotion being expressed.

I liked the book and its audio presentation very much.

I liked the book and its audio presentation very much.
English is not my native language, so for me it is important that the amount of new words I have to check in the online dictionary is reasonable, and that the audio is clear.
Also the plot should be interesting.
The book satisfied my needs. The price of the book 0$ for book and 2$ for audio, relative to its length, was great.

Absolutely an amazing book

Both the story and the narrators were amazing. Truly enjoyed the concept of the book. Would recommend to anybody who really wants a good laugh and a good cry.

Not my genre....

I rarely listen to books that are romance oriented, but this was a Free read (with inexpensive audio to purchase), so I went with it. It held my interest until the end. Am I going for more books in the romance genre? No.

low energy read.

I really didn't care for the performers voices. The reading pace needed to be faster.