Narrated by January Lavoy

January Lavoy is one of my favourite narrators so I was very happy to see she was attached to How to Fail at Flirting. I knew I’d be in for a treat for my ears.

Professor Naya Turner has a special interest in math education, particularly for students from a non-English speaking background. Her department at her Chicago-based university is, however, potentially for the chop when the newish University President announces an “exciting” rebranding and restructure project. (We all know what that means, right?) Naya has worked for many years and is within sight of tenure so this bombshell is devastating for her.

As regards her personal life, Naya has not dated for three years after she broke up with her last boyfriend. I need to let listeners know that there is intimate partner violence in this book, described and on-page and it is one of the major themes of the story. (Interestingly the blurb for the audiobook discloses the existence of an abusive ex but the blurb for the print book does not.) Naya has not really dealt with the trauma of being in an abusive relationship and has barely told anyone about it – in fact, it was not entirely clear to me if she’d told anyone at all. She feels a lot of shame and remains intimidated and fearful of her ex – who is someone who comes back into her orbit during the course of the story. All of those things are fairly common reactions to such abuse and gaslighting. I had a great deal of sympathy for Naya but (and maybe this is just mean of me) I also had a few moments of being a little frustrated with her. After three years she still believed she was at fault in the relationship and she so was not. I wanted someone to tell her that for the longest time but as she had not told anyone, nobody could. (It did happen eventually though and I cheered when it did.)

Naya has a best-friend couple, Aaron and Felicia, who she sees regularly but she does not really socialise otherwise or have many other friends. They encourage her to be bold and have an adventure and after dinner one evening, they dare her to step out of her comfort zone. A list is born – including things like “let a guy buy me a drink”, “have a one-night stand”. There are other things on the list that she adds mentally because of that whole not-telling people thing but it’s clear she wants to reclaim herself and stop allowing her ex to have any power over her.

When she meets Jake Shaw at a bar one evening after (because reasons) Aaron and Felicia are unable to join her, she finds herself ticking some of the boxes on her list. Except the connection between her and Jake is so good and strong that it quickly becomes more than a one-night thing.

Jake is almost perfect. There was one fairly important omission I gave him the severe side-eye for, but otherwise, he was just delightful. A cinnamon roll hero who respects women, isn’t racist or misogynist, is kind and funny, I so enjoyed spending time with him. He’s (of course) also hot but mostly I liked him because he was open about his feelings for Naya and did not play any mind games. He openly admits he “has no chill” and I loved that about him. He was the perfect partner for Naya who really needed to have the experience of being loved unconditionally. He was no doormat; he’s fierce and brave when the situation calls for it but he’s also very much not an alpha-hole.

Naya, over the course of the story, takes her power back and I was delighted when that happened.

Of course, it turns out that Jake has something to do with the university restructure and that creates some difficulties but it was not actually that big of a deal in the overall scheme of things. The abusive ex (both the fallout from the prior relationship and his current machinations) plays a much greater part in the story and the romantic journey.

The narration is, as expected, excellent. January Lavoy has wonderfully convincing male character voices and a wide range of vocal tones to help differentiate the characters. She’s also one of those very excellent narrators who is really good at vocally separating what is internal monologue and what is out-loud dialogue. There is a lot of the former in the book so this was particularly valuable.

Ms. Lavoy also delivers on the emotion and intimate scenes and when things get tense, portrays the escalating drama extremely well.

I found my attention wandering a little in the middle of the book because nothing much was happening. I liked it well enough but mostly it was more of the same; showing Jake and Naya getting closer but not really moving the story forward. The big conflict at the end was a little frustrating but understandable in the scheme of things. The abusive ex storyline had a satisfying resolution even though parts of it felt a little over the top and melodramatic. Still, I could not complain about Naya’s victory.

How to Fail at Flirting has one of those titles that suggests a light-hearted romantic comedy. It is not. It does have lots of cheesy, punny jokes but it covers some very heavy themes and for me it fits squarely into the contemporary romance bucket.

I enjoyed the book and loved the narration – I’d advise listeners to note the content warnings and expect some serious themes but if that’s okay, then I definitely recommend.