Narrated by Sean Crisden

American Love Story is the third book in Adriana Herrera’s Dreamers series featuring the lives and loves of four Afro-Latinx friends from the Bronx. I’ve enjoyed all three so far. (The fourth and final book is out next year.)

Patrice Denis has a PhD in economics and a
passion for social justice, particularly as it relates to systemic racism. He’s
taken a job at Cornell University and moved to Ithaca where his friend Nesto
has a restaurant.

The year before, when Nesto moved to Ithaca
to start his food truck business (which is now a restaurant too), Patrice spent
some time there helping and there he met ADA Easton Archer.

Easton is very WASPy and wealthy and to
make things even more complicated, he works in the justice system Patrice so
often struggles with. But Patrice and Easton were instantly attracted to one
another and had some steamy (off page) hook ups at the time.

Now Patrice is living in the same town and
Easton, while disappointed that Patrice ghosted him for almost a year, is
hopeful that something can really begin between them.

Easton is a public servant but has family
money and owns an apartment building where Patrice ends up renting a unit. This
puts them in close proximity (*rubs hands together*) and the irresistible
attraction between them takes over.

Easton is a very emotionally open and brave
character, putting himself out there time and time again. Patrice on the other
hand is locked tight and is very wary of trusting in a relationship. It sounds
trite but he does have abandonment issues relating to his father, but it is not
trite in its presentation. It is not even particularly explicitly stated but it
seemed a major issue for Patrice from my listening of the book.

While Easton and Patrice are taking
tentative steps to forge a lasting relationship, the Ithaca police force are
disproportionately stopping Black and Brown people (mostly young men) for minor
traffic infringements. Tensions are high and Patrice and Easton are both
worried someone is going to be seriously hurt before any meaningful action is
taken. Easton is in a position to influence the police chief but is initially
constrained by his boss and this creates conflict between him and Patrice too.

The Dreamers series unapologetically
deals with some heavy issues about race, privilege and institutional/systemic
bias that I found illuminating. Attaching a personal story (even a fictional
one) to these issues helps me understand the perspectives of others in a way
that reading an article or a report doesn’t always.

American Love Story may be an issues book but it is also (and first and foremost) a
romance. The relationship between Patrice and Easton is front and centre. I
liked that both men had to compromise and learn to adapt in order to make their
relationship work. Patrice had to open up and trust. Easton’s changes were more
about him facing his privilege in new ways. Easton wasn’t a terrible guy at the
start, of course. But loving Patrice shows him things he didn’t see before and
for their relationship to work, Easton cannot ignore those things.

In the end, they find a way to be together
without compromising who they are and their ideals, even though (of course) the
systemic problems are far from solved (a start is made there though).

Sean Crisden narrates the series. He is
really good with accents and character voices. I loved the way he imbued
Patrice’s tones with a smooth rhythm. This contrasted with Easton’s more
clipped speech. The female cast members were not short-changed either.

My one criticism of Mr. Crisden’s
performance (and this has been common throughout the series so far) is that he
often does not leave enough of a pause between one sentence and the next or one
paragraph and the next. It can mean that the text loses some of its oomph and
the emotion he’s putting into the narration doesn’t have enough time to land.
We are talking maybe a beat or a half a beat but that micro-pause makes such a
difference to my listening experience. It’s not that he talks too fast. The
individual words are clear and well-paced. It is the spaces between which mostly
don’t feel like enough.

Otherwise, the narration was excellent.

My favourite of the series so far is American Fairytale but all three books have been really good and I’m looking forward to the fourth and final instalment next year.