Temptations of Desire

Desires Entwined, Book 3

By: Tempeste O'Riley

Narrated by: Jeff Gelder

Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

Alexander James Noble is a gender-fluid gay man who gave up on finding Mister Right a long time ago. He's not asking for much, though. He just wants a guy who loves all of him and appreciates his feminine form too.

At the local LGBTQ center where Alex regularly volunteers, he meets Dal Sayer, an officer of the Milwaukee PD. Because he's been rejected one too many times, Alex doesn't trust the huge cop and the interest he shows in him, but once Dal sets his mind on something, he goes all out. Pushing aside his preconceived notions, Alex opens up just a little and soon caves.

From their first date - while dealing with his father's failing health and his parents' demands for him to settle down and have children - Dal never takes his eyes off his goal of making Alex his. But proving to Alex he isn't like all the men who couldn't see him for who he truly was and only wanted to hide him away is harder than he thought.

©2014 Tempeste O'Riley (P)2016 Dreamspinner Press

Least favorite of the series

This was my least favorite so far. It’s not that I didn’t love Alex and Dal it was the entire BS that Dal’s parents keep trying to force him into this stupid marry a nice girl and have kids. That entire thing took away from their story. I hated it. Also, I would have liked the rescuing of Chase from Dal’s POV and seeing what led up to him getting shot.

Lovely story

I LOVED Alex and his own unique gender identity and how easily Dal accepted and went with it. It seemed to really flow. I was, however, concerned that nobody – even Alex and his twin – seemed to really find a pronoun that was comfortable for use. I think “they/them” would be appropriate here as when Alex was Lexi the pronoun “he” was still used and when listening to this and hearing the very feminine sounding voice being called “him” was somewhat off-putting.

I was also a bit confused about Dal’s family situation. It never made sense how it could be ok for one brother to be gay but not the other.

However, I really liked these two as a couple and in general I liked their story a bit more than Rhys’.

4.5 of 5 stars

Audio

I had the same complaints with the narrator as in book two. He did a great job with giving Lexi/Alex a high, somewhat gender neutral voice and then giving Dal a lovely deep voice. The sound quality and editing were good. But my main issue is that Jeff Gelder sounded very monotone and stilted throughout much of the book and it wasn’t my favorite of his narrations.

3 of 5 stars

Overall 4 of 5 stars

Ended very abruptly

The narration was very stilted in placed and I found it difficult to get drawn in.

Would have liked the story to be fleshed out a bit more. Also, the ending was extremely abrupt, like cut off mid sentence abrupt. Not sure if it was a recording/editing problem or if the author did it intentionally, but it left me wondering "what the heck, where's the rest?"