Narrated by Kale Williams

Crashing Upwards is a fairly low-drama romance by a new-to-me author, and I picked up the audio to review partly because some of my online friends enjoyed the book, partly because it’s a LAMBDA award winner, and partly because Kale Williams is narrating. I suspect that the award-winner status raised my expectations somewhat, because while the story is engaging enough, it doesn’t really have anything new to offer, and the characters, while likeable, are nothing I haven’t read or listened to before.

That said, the way the two protagonists
meet IS unusual. I can’t call it a meet-cute, not when Sam Foster hits Harper
Jones with his car, knocks him off his bike and lands him in hospital. Harper
regains consciousness to find an unfamiliar man sitting by his hospital bed,
apologising and telling him that he’ll take care of him and that his father
will pay for a new bike and whatever else he needs. As Harper gradually starts
to get a clearer picture of what’s happened, he understands that the man – who introduces
himself as Sam Foster – is apologising for hitting him with his car and telling
him not to worry about the medical bills or, indeed, about anything because
he’ll deal with it all. Harper, who has supported himself since he was sixteen and
now earns his living as a bike messenger, can’t NOT worry – about the bills,
about his job, about making the rent – so being told he shouldn’t isn’t exactly
helping.

Sam works for his father, a moderate
Republican senator who is running for re-election. Born into wealth and
privilege, Sam is a glass-half-full kinda guy and is dedicated to helping those
less fortunate, spending a lot of his spare time doing charity work. Sam works
hard for the campaign, even going so far as to hide his sexuality so as not to
rock the boat with some of his father’s biggest donors, but is growing
increasingly frustrated at his father’s refusal to discuss the fact that he’s
tired of living a lie and wants to come out.

Sam has been crushing on Harper for a
while, having seen him around a few times when he’s made deliveries to the
campaign offices, and he’s determined to make sure Harper has everything he needs
for his recovery. Harper is highly sceptical – Sam seems too good to be true –
but he’s also been alone for most of his adult life and has learned that the
only person he can rely on is himself, so he finds it difficult to accept help
or to admit that he needs it. But when he’s discharged just a day after the accident
(which made no sense to me – he was badly banged up, couldn’t walk unaided,
wouldn’t really be able to look after himself, and as far as the staff knew at
the time lived alone – yet they were going to send him home without even
assessing his ability to take care of himself?) he has no alternative but to
accept Sam’s offer of help, which involves Sam basically moving in with him
until such time as Harper is properly on the mend.

Crashing
Upwards is a simple (perhaps even under-developed) story
with very little conflict or obstacles in the way of the romance. Based on what
the synopsis says about Sam’s father (who believes that Harper is out to milk
Sam for every penny he can get) being prepared to do whatever it takes to get
his son away from Harper, I’d expected a bit of suspense – for instance, when
Harper’s apartment is destroyed in a fire, I thought that maybe there was some
nefarious plot afoot, but no; it was just a way for the author to make it
necessary for Harper to move into Sam’s house. I also found Sam’s insistence on
paying for absolutely everything to
be a bit over the top – and even creepy. I get that he felt really guilty for
injuring Harper in the first place, but his continued refrain of “let me pay
for this – it’s my fault you’re injured” actually made me uncomfortable after a
while; given Harper had no alternative after his apartment burned down leaving
him with nothing but the clothes on his back, it seemed manipulative and Sam
kept overriding Harper’s protests and denying him his independence. (Had I not
known in advance this was a romance, I’d have been waiting for the big reveal
where Sam is a crazy stalker insinuating himself into Harper’s life!)

The writing is… okay, but there’s not a lot
of plot here, and what there is, is repetitive, basically consisting of Sam
telling Harper he’ll take care of him, Harper telling him no, Sam not taking no
for an answer and Harper telling him why they can’t be together – rinse –
repeat. And that repetitiveness in the plot is echoed in the writing with a
number of heavily re-used words and phrases (something I tend to notice more in
audio than I do in print.) Characters “chuff” a lot – as in “he chuffed” – which
I’m guessing is something like a snort or a huff? (Although in the UK it can
also mean fart). And people “bug” their eyes frequently – so much that I
wondered if any of them were going to end up with eye strain.

As I said at the beginning, one of the
reasons I chose to review Crashing
Upwards was Kale Williams – but while his smooth, attractive voice did
manage to get me past the worst of the repetitions and lack of plot and
character development, even a really good narrator can’t save a mediocre book. There
are only a handful of secondary characters in the story, which include Sam’s
parents, Harper’s long-lost sister and his jackass boss; Mr. Williams
characterises them all well and differentiates effectively between all of them
and the two principals – although at times, Sam and Harper sounded very similar
and I’m not sure I could have always worked out which was which had it not been
for the dialogue tags. The performance is well-paced and expressive; I just
wish Mr. Williams had been given better material to work with.

 As
is obvious, I can’t give Crashing
Upwards a ringing endorsement; the narration is good, but the story just
didn’t work for me. S.C. Wynne has an extensive back catalogue in print and a
few other titles available in audio, so I may give their work another try at
some point.