A review by judeinthestars
A Calculated Risk by Cari Hunter

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

When I reviewed this story in its book form last summer, I wrote that one of the things I love about Cari Hunter’s books is “the author’s ability to make me hear the characters” and that I was looking forward to Nicola Vincent’s narration, so I could check whether I had got them right. As usual, Vincent went beyond my expectations (even though I had a moment of uncertainty at the beginning, I’m not sure why). She’s so good at varying voices, matching them to each character, even the smallest secondary one.

Every time I review one of Cari Hunter’s stories—and I guess even more when I review an audiobook after the book—I worry that I might keep repeating the same things and sound overly enthusiastic. I am not, though. Enthusiastic, absolutely, but not overly so.

The stories she tells don’t leave me warm and fuzzy at the end, they’re dark and bleak and would absolutely make me cry if I let myself think about them too much. I don’t read Hunter’s books for escapism. They’re realistic and believable and, in that, as disheartening as real life.

But.

But they also have the most beautiful characters. I know I’ve written this before and I know I’ll write it again, the world may be a horrible place but people like Jo and Isla and Tully—because I want to believe there are people like them IRL—give me hope that all isn’t lost. I don’t get that hope from sunshiny novels, with those I get to escape and recharge. The hope, however, I get from dark, gritty, painful stories from which it emerges on the shoulders of those who overcome the dark, the grit, the pain. Who live with them, find happiness despite them.

These are the books that inspire me and give me strength, they feed me and empower me, even if all I do with this power is wake up another day (and sometimes I do a lot more than that, but even that feels like a win). In some books, the dark, the grit, the pain come from inside the characters—though often it’s inside because of something that happened outside—and in others, it’s in the circumstances. Hunter writes the latter, and she writes her MCs and the people around them with such tenderness, such generosity, that everything that is wrong with the world feels manageable.

Loads of thanks to fellow reviewer Marie Sotiriou for the gift of this audiobook 🙏

Read all my reviews on my blog (and please buy from the affiliation links!): Jude in the Stars