Review: Pretty good nonangsty NA.  Who knew they existed.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 13, 2014
***I listened to the Audible version so I don't know what the punctuation and spelling was like.***I liked it.  I really did.  I wasn't surprised because I have liked other stuff this author has written.Or so I thought.Here is where I confess I am not very bright.  This was a Whispersync deal.  I will buy pretty much any WS combo that comes in under 5 bucks unless I have issues with the writer and/or narrator.Saw this.  Jumped on it.  Of course, I thought this was written by Allison Packard, not Allison Parr.  Yep.  As an aside, Allison Packard writes a pretty darn good book, too.And then (remember, I am not very bright) I realized this was NA.  Wait, I don't like NA.  I don't buy NA because I don't want to encourage all the whining and self-centeredness in NA.  "Just Say No to NA" would be my battle cry in the  publishing wars.Guess what. There is no whining or self-centeredness in this book.Our heroine, Natalie, is 23, a grad student.  There is a lot of setup about what she is in grad school for (archeology) and what her career goals are.  A bit of that (remember, I am not very bright) went right over my head.  But I understood enough, grasped enough, remembered enough to muddle through it.  Her educational issues are the reason for the conflict in the book.  The particulars are not that important to understanding what is going on and the motivation behind actions.Our hero, Mike, holds the key (and the title) to Natalie being able to do a dig on land in Ireland.  Natalie had previously been given permission to dig on this land, but the previous owner dies, leaving the land to Mike.Mike says no to the dig.  He has his reasons, of course, but they are revealed later.  Mike is a quarterback for a fictional NY football team.  This means he can go to Ireland in the off season for family reasons and then hang around for what seems like a really long time.As far as the story goes, I had some basic issues with it.  There were some things that just didn't make sense.  Basic-reactions-as-human- beings-type things.  Maybe I missed some things because I listened to the Audible version (no Audible cover available), but some things just didn't flow.  There were a couple of times where we are in one location doing one thing and next thing you know they are sitting having tea.  I think this is just a transition that was not easily picked up on in the narration.The sex is 99.9 percent behind doors.  Oh, that was one of the transitions I didn't pick up on.  Our young couple apparently starts an intimate relationship and I missed it.  They are kissing and cuddling, then the next thing I hear after they have a fight is that was the first night Natalie had not visited Mike's room.  Ummm, okay.  Didn't know that was going on.  But that could be my lack of brightness again.  And it could also be one of the vagaries of audiobooks.  I couldn't flip back to search for something I may have missed so I just went with it.As always, everybody is too beautiful, too successful, too cute.  But you learn to get over that.I did enjoy seeing Natalie have healthy, supportive relationships with other women.  I did appreciate the fact that Natalie was a bit timid about certain things, but she just plunged in and educated herself and executed what needed to be executed.All in all, it was a positive, mature YA book.Narration was good.  There were accents, different languages, all well done.  While there weren't necessarily "men's" voices and "women's" voices, all were distinguishable.  Very nicely done.