Narrated by Michael Fell

I read and enjoyed Jenny Holiday’s Undue Influence when it came out last year, and having also enjoyed Michael Fell’s performance in Infamous, I was looking forward to listening to their next collaboration. The novel is a contemporary reworking of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, set in the small town of Bishop’s Glen in upstate New York and in it, our parted lovers are Adam Elliot, the son of a wealthy family of winemakers, and town bad-boy Freddy Wentworth. Undue Influence can be enjoyed regardless of whether you’re familiar with the original; and if you are, you’ll enjoy spotting the key plot points and characters the author has carried over and how they’ve been adapted.

Adam Elliot is spending the evening at the
family home on the Kellynch Estate for the final time. His father’s death five
years earlier, followed by his mother and sister’s insistence on ignoring the
worsening state of their finances and spending lavishly, has run their winery
business into the ground, and now they’re broke and have been forced to sell
up. But even now, the ladies continue to act as though nothing is wrong and are
planning a prolonged stay with an old friend in the Hamptons. Adam, however, is
perfectly happy to remain in Bishop’s Glen, even though leaving Kellynch is
going to be a real wrench for him. He’s always had a strong affinity for the
land, and that affinity is what’s kept him in Bishop’s Glen in spite of the
constant nagging by his friend and mentor, Rusty Anderson, to leave town and
make something of his life.

Celebrity chef Freddy Wentworth co-owns and
runs the popular New York restaurant Captain’s
with his best friend. Freddy left the “armpit
of the finger lakes” – Bishop’s Glen – eight years earlier and hasn’t been
back – has no desire to go back seeing as there’s no longer anything there for
him. The broken heart he left with was proof of that. Fate has other plans for
him however, when he hears the surprising news that his sister and her husband
have purchased the Kellynch estate… and in spite of himself, Freddy can’t help wondering
what’s happened to Adam in the eight years since they parted.

The storyline of Undue Influence follows that of Persuasion quite closely, although the author makes a couple of big
changes in the way the story is actually told. The first is that we get both
Adam and Freddy’s perspectives on events, and the second is that we’re witness
to the development of their romance eight years earlier in a series of flashbacks
that alternate with the present day chapters almost throughout. That early
romance is just lovely; Freddy – who has a reputation for being more than a bit
wild – is smitten with Adam from the first moment he sees him, and Adam, who is
shy and considers himself unremarkable, is kind of surprised that someone like
Freddy would be interested in him at all. What starts as Freddy walking Adam
home from work – even though he lives miles in the opposite direction – becomes
a friendship that blossoms into more, and for a while, Adam and Freddy are
blissfully happy together. But the approaching end of summer is going to signal
change, and as anyone familiar with the original will know, it’s not a change
for the better.

Present day Adam and Freddy still carry
regrets about the way things ended between them all those years ago – truth be
told, they regret that things ended at all – and Freddy tries hard to convince
himself that he still hates Adam for breaking up with him. But it’s not long
before he has to abandon the effort and admit that he wants a second chance –
now he just has to work out if that’s what Adam wants, too.

I love second chance romances, and Persuasion is kind of the granddaddy –
should that be grandmother? – of them all, but the problem with updating it is
that of finding a plausible reason for the central couple to split up. In the
original, Anne Elliot is a young woman of good family and Wentworth is a mere
midshipman with neither wealth nor prospects. At that time in history someone like
Anne would have been subject to the wishes and demands of her family, and so
she is persuaded – for monetary and familial reasons – to reject the man she
loves. That reason won’t wash in the twenty-first century, so my biggest issue
with this updated version is that Ms. Holiday hasn’t really come up with a
plausible reason for Adam and Freddy’s split. Yes, Adam’s family disapproved of
Freddy and yes, Adam’s friend Rusty – who was his only real friend and the only
person who was there for him when Adam really needed someone – kept telling him
to get out of Bishop’s Glen and go to college and make a better life; but that
isn’t strong enough to account for the break-up, in the twenty-first century, of
two people who were so clearly deeply in love. That pivotal plot-point drives
the entire novel, and although I really did enjoy the love story and
characters, its weakness is impossible to ignore.

Michael Fell delivers a solid, well-paced
and expressive performance. He has a pleasant, youthful tone which is a good
fit for the two leads, and pitches Freddy’s voice a little lower than Adam’s so
they’re generally easy to tell apart. The handful of female characters who
appear in the story sound distinct from the men (even if they don’t always
sound especially feminine), and the various secondary characters are clearly
delineated for the most part, although I did sometimes find myself having to
rely on dialogue tags. I also noticed several mispronunciations and mis-reads
that really should have been picked up in post-production and corrected (at
least once, Mr. Fell substituted one character’s name for another, for
example), and there’s also a repeated line in chapter four (or five?), which
again, should have been corrected prior to release.

In spite of my criticisms, I enjoyed
listening to Undue Influence. Ms.
Holiday’s reworking of this much-loved classic is generally well done, and
she’s captured much of the spirit of the original novel. The youthful romance
between Freddy and Adam is tender and sweet, and their second-chance love story
is full of heartfelt longing as they both realise the need to let go of the
past if they’re to have a future together. Fans of second chance romances
should definitely consider checking it out.