The Miles High Club #4
Kindle e-book, Audible audiobook
Author: T. L. Swan
Narrators: C.J. Bloom and Sebastian York
Christopher Miles is called out by his brothers for being a bratty, drama queen, whiny, entitled millennial. Christopher takes a one-year sabbatical to backpack incognito (sorta) with very little money, proving to us that he is indeed a bratty, drama queen, whiny, entitled millennial. He falls in love during the trip. There is also a kid.
I’m going to start by saying that this series is one of my favorites and The Takeover is one of my all time favorite books. It’s perfect! That I’m sure influenced in part how I saw this book. Sadly, this was one was definitely not for me.
What I liked:
- Christopher and Eddie – the relationship between the billionaire and the street urchin reminded me of the Christopher I saw in the previous books.
- When the family gets together. It just warmed my heart. Also the cameos from characters from other series.
- The few moments with Hayden when the Christopher I knew appears. Those were swoony, but rare. I was hanging on to them. A LOT.
What didn’t work FOR ME and why:
- Christopher is almost unrecognizable. He has one default in this book: yelling, screaming , raging… you get the point. He didn’t even come out as entitled. He came out as rude and disrespectful.
- The fact that Hayden does all the emotional work in the relationship. And I needed him to grovel.
- The “britishness” of the American characters speech.
- The all around (even reversed) slut shaming. Hayden maybe sheltered by she calls him a deviant so many times it’s annoying. She accepts unprotected sex anyway. WTF?! The way most women are portrayed is not good either. The first woman he meets and the way he talks about her and her “body hair”… just no. If it was meant to be funny, it missed the mark by a mile.
- I’m Brazilian and Basil is nowhere near “Brazilian”. Starting with the name and the no showering thing. We get teased everywhere for showering TOO MUCH (hot country, sweat, yeah, that doesn’t fly), so nope.
- The humor – it was 80s sitcom-ish (crass and sexist) and I didn’t laugh at all. I cringed a lot, though.
To sum up, I was disappointed. I was already predisposed to love it and it didn’t happen. I really need the upcoming book of epilogues for this series to erase this from my mind. I really wanted to love this.
Narration: I love C.J. Bloom and SebYo, but they were miscast. Too many accents (the Brazilian one is appalling) and although I think SebYo is a narration god, he doesn’t sound like a youngish 31-year old, especially a bratty one.
