Flipping for Him

By: Jeff Adams

Narrated by: Jason Frazier

Length: 3 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Finding a guy was easy. Keeping him might be harder than running up a tree.

Kevin McCollum is a high school junior with the usual things on his mind: getting good grades, having fun, and finding a boyfriend. The last one was eluding him until he noticed the "parkour guy". After several days of Kevin pretending to study while watching the attractive teen jump on rocks, run up trees, and do flips, Shin finally comes over to introduce himself. As they start dating, Kevin should've known it wouldn't be that easy.

Shin's parents only want their son to date Japanese boys. When cultures clash and pressures mount, Kevin has no idea how to subvert traditions and Shin's parents to keep the boy he cares about.

Kevin will need to clear some tricky obstacles to make his modern love story a reality.

©2015 Jeff Adams (P)2015 Jeff Adams

Flipping for Him

Shin is the Parkour guy Kevin has been drooling over.
But what Kevin didn’t know is that Shin was noticing him too.

They started out a friendship that quickly turned to romantic feelings but nothing is ever easy as they learned.
Shin’s ex has plans and Shin’s family have ideas of who he should be with and a white guy isn’t one of them.

They really struggle and it’s not about racism it about culture and how Shin’s family kind of come to terms with a few things. Like arranged marriage, and being with someone of the same culture.

What I liked was even with all of the struggle Shin stood up for himself and for Kevin.

I loved the ending I want MORE!!

Great narration this was a first for me by this narrator and I really enjoyed it.

Sweet YA romance

A very YA book. I enjoyed it. The conflict here was one of culture clash rather than sexuality. Shin is of Japanese decent, Kevin is white. Shin’s parents want him to date only Japanese boys. A refreshing prejudice for a change in MM romance.

Good narration, although the narrator tended to aspirate before he spoke and this annoyed me at times.

I was looking for a short, uncomplicated listen and this delivered. No below the belt action here. Very, very YA.

Narration really helped bump the story up a notch

I had never heard of "parkour" and didn't look it up until after I started listening. So when Kevin called his unknown crush as the "parkour guy," I heard it as "park whore" guy, LOL! In any case, there was some sweetness in this story and I get the YA teenage feelings of insta-love, but the plot didn't quite work for me and Im speaking from my viewpoint as a person of Japanese-American ancestry. Ultimately, even though acceptance of any character being gay wasnt an issue at all in this story, the portrayal of Japanese traditions and characterization leaned too much into stereotypical territory.

Jason Frazier's narration, while not perfect in the Japanese accent/ intonations, did a very good job of infusing personality into the characters and keeping me listening.

I would say give it a shot if you're looking for a short, sweet listen. The story redeems itself in the end.

Culture Clash

Flipping for Him was my first book by Jeff Adams, and it was a good introduction to his works- I'll definitely be looking into more.
What I liked about this story was that it wasn't the boys sexuality that caused the issue, it was the fact that Kevin wasn't Japanese. It caused quite a bit of conflict, as did the behind-the-scenes manipulations by Quan. But since this was a very short story, after a little drama and angst, things were resolved rather quickly. It was a cute story, if a little too "insta" for my liking- it didn't seem feasible that these boys would fall so hard and so fast, but it's been a long time since I was a teen, so maybe that really is how it would have been! And yeah, the arranged marriage bit was a little far-fetched. But overall it was an entertaining 3 hours.

Not only was this my first Jeff Adams book, it was also my first with narrator Jason Frazier. I enjoyed his voice- he really did a great job with the female characters, I almost thought a woman had joined him just to voice them! I did feel like Quan's character was a bit overplayed- he almost seemed like a baddie from a b-rated movie, and not a teenager. Other than that, I liked that he sounded young enough to portary teens- it's not always easy to find narrators who are able to portray younger characters.

***Borrowed through Audible Escape.

Excellent

If you could sum up Flipping for Him in three words, what would they be?

Very fun read

What did you like best about this story?

I really enjoyed how the characters met and their interaction. The secondary characters were strong too. This was well plotted and shaped. I thought it was a very cute YA story.

Have you listened to any of Jason Frazier’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

This is the first book by Jason Frazier I have listened to and I was astounded. I have never heard a narrator do "other" voices so well. Yes, I knew which one was Kevin, but then the accents for the other characters like Shin, and the female characters, blew me away because they were so distinct. He is definitely an actor I would like to listen to again.

ok story, great performance

I love Jason and will listen to anything he reads. That guy could make an IKEA instruction book sound sexy. He did struggle a little finding a good accent for Shin (I would have just stuck with a straight American accent) but it didn't deminish the performance too much.

The story is OK as long as you can get past the lack of research on behalf of the author in to Japanese culture. A lot of the book relies on tropes. My biggest issue is the names. Quan isn't a Japanese name. It grated all the way through. Otherwise I liked the general journey of the story.

Ok

Nice YA romance, but I'm not sure I found it all that believable. It seemed like the cultural issues were solved with an almost magic wand approach. Very sweet story overall and I'm glad that it didn't turn into the lead in for the best friends to become boyfriends as well.

Confused

The storyline was interesting enough. But it was hard to remember that these were high school kids, at times. The narrator was painful. I had to speed up the narration just to tolerate the book being read. Long story short, this was not a good experience.